Wizards of Waverly Place: Tangents
by Thor2000
Summary: This was the story to wrap my previous WOWP; Max travels in time and alters Alex's past. When he returns, it's not the same Russo Family he left behind....
1. Chapter 1

It was a cold blustery night on Waverly Place with few pedestrians out. Steam wafted from manhole covers, people trussed up in thick coats and heavy layers of clothes hurried on the way past the lighted glow of shops and markets. At Delvecchio's Pizza Place, the staff shivered and jumped when customers came in letting the cold in as they arrived to eat. Mike Romano had to close the loading dock of his produce place because the breeze was freezing his produce. Kids at Waverly Used Cars were pulling down icicles and throwing them at each other. Others were crunching through pools of frozen water along nearby Elliott Street. On the sidewalk, Sean Finnerty felt a pinprick of cold and tilted his head back to the cloudy night sky looking for snowflakes. There was not a star to be seen as cars headed down through Waverly Place and nearby Greenwich Village. At the Waverly Place Sub Shop, Justin felt a chill every time he came past the entranceway into the shop. Despite the cold weather with warnings of snow looming, he had been steadily busy in the shop taking care of customers ordering sandwiches to take home. His father was manning the kitchen, his mother was taking care of the duties of being in a family and his brother was… somewhere.

The last member was Alex Russo, the cute and brunette diva of the family and she had starry eyes tonight as her current beau helped her in her history homework. Kevin Mitchell was a bit different than most of her past beaus; he had a brain. He was not as distracted as Dean or as cursed as Mason, but he did have one thing going for him. He was crazy about her. He could look into her eyes and see what she was thinking, and somehow know just what she wanted. He carried her books before she asked, he took her hand when she was thinking it and was there holding open doors for her before she knew he was there. She practically had him bewitched, and with her talents, that possibility was very likely. Alex looked at Kevin and grinned a little bit, pulling her hair back a little and giggling under her breath before looking back at him and glancing back at him to see if he was looking at her. With assignments on the Cold War in Europe before them, he pretended to look away then back at her again, the two of them now giggling in unison with each other before he leaned over, held her chin in his left hand pressed his lips to hers. Alex gasped as if she was taking in his breath, her heart starting to flutter just a bit to feel him close to her. Coming up from the garage, Theresa carried the laundry ahead of her husband, noticed her daughter kissing her current boyfriend and awed to see her baby in love. Jerry saw it another way.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!!!" He screamed. "Get those lips off my daughter!"

Kevin jumped back clutching his chest.

"Dad!"

"Jerry?" Theresa looked back at him too grinning at his jealous nature.

"I'm sorry, but…" Jerry tried to apologize. "But to me, she's still… daddy's little girl."

"Kevin…" Alex gave Kevin a peck to the cheek. "Give me a second…" Alex rose in her white sweater and blue jeans, tugging her sweater down a bit and whipping her long dark locks back before casually strutting off the landing to the patio over to her father in the kitchen nook. She tilted her head up like a little lady, lowered her voice a bit and glanced from her father to her mother and back again.

"Daddy…" Alex came up to the kitchen counter. "I want to tell Kevin I'm a wizard. Can I…"

"Awwwww…" Jerry looked at his baby. "No."

"Oh, come on, dad…" Alex came around to face him as he checked his roast in the oven. "You were young once, and besides… all you have to do is reactivate those memories you had Justin bury… You know, from when we were trapped in his short story."

"Hmmm…" Jerry sounded as if he was considering it. "No."

"But he could be your future son-in-law…"

"He can?" Theresa wasn't sure of she was worried or excited.

"Oh, well, it you're going to put it like that…" Jerry continued. "Heck, no!!!"

"But, dad…"

"No, Alex…" Jerry turned round from checking the family dinner and looked at his daughter in his way. "Look, I know you really like this boy, but… You two might not last. Give it a few more months… Did I say months? A few more years… and if you still feel the same about him, then you can tell him, like say… Oh, how about in the year 2025?" He gave Alex a fatherly little squeeze on her shoulder and turned round to return downstairs to the shop. Alex just sighed a bit defeatedly and dejectedly and looked over to Kevin working at their homework on the table. She looked over to her mother.

"Mom…"

"Honey…" Theresa checked her vegetables for dinner and turned back to sort the clean laundry. "I'm sorry, but it's way to early for you to set your sights on one boy. Just wait a bit longer…"

"How much longer?" Alex advanced on her mother a bit.

"Any time but now…"

"But I want to know if he'll accept me as a wizard." Alex glanced over to Kevin and back to her mother. "Mom, this is real. I need to know."

"Not now, honey…" Theresa stroked her little girl's head and lifted the laundry basket to sort the contents in the next room. A deep sigh from her lungs, Alex turned on her heel lightly and heard a noise from the floor above. Hesitating sharply, she noticed her brother, Max, coming down toward her from the staircase. He'd been eavesdropping again.

"I think I can help." He announced.

"How?" Alex looked at him a bit interested but nervously apprehensive.

"Like this… Hey, Kevin…" Max went rushing over to her boyfriend. "Alex really likes you. Oh, and by the way, she's a wizard. We all are!"

Alex slapped her head to her forehead embarrassed. Kevin sat up waiting for the punchline.

"Yeah…" Max continued talking. "In fact, you knew all about it a long time ago, but dad had Justin erase your memories with a spell."

Kevin sat chuckling a moment thinking it was all a joke. Getting over the full-face embarrassment, Alex chuckled a bit, wandered over and draped her right arm around Max's head with her hand over his mouth.

"Excuse me a minute…" She shined lovingly to Kevin then started choking her brother down to the floor and calling him an idiot for ruining what she wanted to be a very special moment between her and Kevin. Still wondering what the joke was, Kevin watched as the two of them lowered down past his view over the table until he couldn't see either of them. All he heard was Max choking and gasping for air, a sudden shriek and Alex slowly standing straight and adjusting her top with a happy look on her face.

"Kevin…" She spoke sweetly innocent again. "I wanted to be the one to tell you… in my own way."

"You're a wizard?'

"Yes, yes, I am."

"A wizard?"

"Isn't that what I just said?!" Max mentioned from the floor, and Alex's foot just suddenly kicked him as he groaned from the pain. At that moment, Harper Finkle entered the Russo's loft from the entryway to the street instead of the stairway through the shop. Dressed in her cheerleader uniform, she was Alex's best friend staying with her and completing high school. The wide-eyed ingénue dropped her purse, set her books aside and strided assured of herself and head high toward the kitchen nook to get a snack before starting her homework.

"Harper…" Kevin looked over to her from the dining area. "Is there something special about Alex that I don't know?"

"You mean…" Harper pulled out a diet soda and the makings of a salad. "Besides the fact that she's a…" Her eyes went wide and she dropped her jaw ecstatically looking back to Alex. "You told him that you're a wizard! Alex! You promised to wait till I could be hear to see his face when you told him the secret!"

"Well…" Alex lightly tossed a bit of her hair back with a twitch of her head. "Technically, Max told him…" She swatted her hand to her idiot brother getting off the floor.

"Stop hitting me!" Her brother reacted from getting slapped.

"Alex…" Kevin checked his watch and started pulling his schoolbooks together. "Look, I knew you were special from the first time I saw you, but…" He lightly brushed her hair from her face with his hand. "You don't have to get your brother to say crazy stuff like this to get me to…"

"You don't believe me?"

"Look, she really is a wizard…" Harper testified. "I mean… the stuff I've seen, the things she's turned me into…" She leaned toward him. "I once got stuck in her head…" She paused. "And your vampire short story!" She nodded her head.

"Kevin, please…" Alex took Kevin's hand to stop him from leaving.

"Alex, you don't have to say crazy stuff like this to impress me." He looked into her big brown eyes bouncing back and forth between his hazel eyes. "I'd love you if you were Buddhist, Jewish or a… Greek goddess."

"She's been that too!" Harper added as Alex made an odd look toward her then back to Kevin.

"I'm not crazy…" Alex was too much in love with him to be offended. "I can prove it to you." She reached to her pocket for something, looked around and over to Harper. "Where's my wand?"

"I think it's in your purse." Harper looked round.

"I think I can bring back Kevin's memories." Max grinned awkwardly sure of himself with a weird grin on his face. "Just let me try…"

"Oh, this can't possibly be good." Harper saw something about to happen.

"Uh, Alex…" Kevin looked at her trustingly but not so much for her crazy brother. "Look, if you say you're a Wizard, I'm sure…"

"Just give him a chance." Alex held his hand. "You love me, right?"

"I'm crazy about you, but…"

"_Return back to the memories you lost_." Max incanted as a light came from his wand, grew brighter and brighter before them and then exploded. As the flash faded away, Alex and Harper could see the traces of smoke hung in the air and then realized Max had vanished. Maybe the spell was a bit too open for interpretation. Max had meant to bring back Kevin's buried memories, but did it send him to revisit his own memories or did it undo Justin's spell from months before? Alex and Harper looked around for him, but they couldn't see him. Harper turned round scanning the room over, and Alex spun around looking for her brother on the floor and on the ceiling. Kevin meanwhile wavered a bit dizzy before her.

"Max?" Alex waved her arm to see if he was invisible and checked the floor to see if he was shrunk. "Max? Oh god! Kevin, I just lost my brother!"

"And you are?" He looked strangely at her. He had lost all his memories!! Alex's eyes went wide and her hands reached to her mouth in shock! Her eyes started filling full of tears upon realizing what she had done. No... What had Max done?! Kevin didn't know who she was at all!!!

"Well, I called that one!!!" Harper testified.


	2. Chapter 2

2

April 26, 2009…

Alex didn't know what to do. She had used one of the few spells which she remembered to switch bodies and identities with Harper in order to cheat on a test she hadn't studied or prepared herself for in school. Harper had taken the test and knew the answers so all she had to do was take it again as Alex for Alex. It was a pretty good stunt if the then sixteen-year-old sorceress could get away with it, but the first problem arose when Alex as Harper tried to change them back. The spell did not want to work. Maybe she had waited too long. Maybe her magic ability had been split in half between her spirit in Harper's body and her body with Harper's spirit in it and she didn't have full power to undo the spell. Meanwhile, Harper as Alex was swooning for her brother, Justin, briefly until Alex could secretly switch them back. Up in her bedroom in secret, spell after spell wouldn't correct them. They had switched hair types and traded voices. Alex checked the family spell book and noticed a spell for merging Harper and herself into one person, looked at her body with Harper in it and ignored it to try it last.

"Oh, here's another one…" She moved to the next one. "_This has all been a pain, now we want to switch back our brains_." Harper's hand cast the spell for Alex and she felt dizzy as if the room ceased to exist and became an illusion. Without her senses attached, she kind of fazed out until she returned to her body and could feel the stimuli her body could tell her brain and then she felt normal again. It was a sensation like briefly feeling stoned but when the dizziness went in came the incredible headache. It felt as if her brain was suddenly weighing a ton, but at least she was finally looking at Harper and not herself. She had her body back!

"It worked." She reached to her best friend in a daze. "Harper, are you okay?" The cute brunette looked back to her a bit out of it. She dropped Alex's wand and the spell book and lightly swayed a bit on her feet just barely cognizant. She had seemingly reverted to the status of a newborn infant.

"Oh no!" Alex reached to her while trying to deal with the incredible headache. "Harper, where'd you go?!"

"My brain is still in your head, Alex!" Alex's brain jumped to a different channel and a different personality.

"What? Oh no…" Now both of her memories and personalities were downloaded into the same brain, and Harper's body was rendered inert, uninhabited, uncontrolled and just basically reacting on instinct without any active brainwaves controlling it. Alex's brain was now storing the memories and identities for two people. "Ow… ow… I think I better get Justin!"

"Really?" Alex jumped to another brainwave frequency. "Because I suggested that like over an hour ago."

"Okay, okay…" Alex's personality took control again and turned toward the door, but someone was in her way. She crashed into Max in her way, stumbled backward trying to stay standing and hit her head on the footboard of her bed on the way to the floor. Max looked around confused, recognizing Alex's room around him and lowered his wand.

"Well, that was a pretty powerful spell." He chuckled at himself. "It knocked me all the way up here to Alex's room!" He looked to Harper who dropped to sit on the bed then to Alex lying on the floor. "Alex, if you're going to take a nap, you do have a bed." He shook his head at her. "Here, let me help…" He knelt down, took his sister's arm to pull her up and heaved her up on to his shoulder, holding on to her around the waist and dragging her lip body over to the bed and laying her out over it.

"Hey, Harper…" Max looked to her. "Thanks for not helping."

The crazy best friend just sat there staring vacuously at her reflection in the vanity mirror trying to recognize herself.

"Yeah…" Max rolled his eyes and turned for the door and head down to the loft with the intention of raiding the refrigerator for a snack. He came down the stairway loudly hitting every step dodging his brother at the bottom.

"Hey, Max…"

"Hey, Max…" Thirteen-year-old Max met fifteen-year-old Max. The younger version looked at the future version, looked away and back again. Something was different here. The younger Max looked to his new brother.

"I think you better get back in the mirror." He told his future self. "This is just going to get me in a lot of trouble."

"I'm not going back into any mirror." Max sipped a can of soda. "You're that mini-me I asked dad for last Christmas!"

"I am?"

"Yeah…" Older Max sipped his soda. "Can you believe how much fun we are going to have driving Justin and Alex crazy?" He started nodding his head.

"Yeah!!!" Young Max loved the idea. "Like putting shaving cream in their shoes and dead fish in their beds!!"

"Exactly!!"

"Max…" Justin stepped inside from the balcony after talking to his mother and headed to the brother sipping the soda. "Okay, I got mom to agree to Family Game Night. You're still going to help me deal with Daphne, right?" He placed his arm around his brother and realized he was a bit different. "Are you getting taller or something? You look different!" He casually looked over and noticed his real brother and jumped unprepared. "Whoa!! Who… He…I… What? Max, what did you do?!"

"That's my mini-me." Future Max grinned.

"That's my maxi-me." Present Max grinned.

"What?!" Justin looked at the two of them. He had enough problems with crazy Daphne Newbridge coming over; he didn't need another clone of his brother right now! "Mom! Dad!! We got a problem!!" He screamed for his parents. His mother came in from the patio, and his father came up from the shop on the first floor. The first thing they saw together was the two Max's. What the heck was going on here?

"Max?" Theresa Russo looked to her other taller son.

"Max, what did you do?" Jerry jumped to defensive mode. What did his kids whip up now?

"Nothing!" The two chorused.

"You don't think this…" Jerry waved his hand over the two copies. "Is weird?"

"Not really." The two echoed.

"One of these…" Justin stood thinking and analyzing the situation. "…Is not the real Max. One of them… has to be a duplicate."

"You think?" Jerry looked to Justin and approached the taller version of Max, checking his ear, looking into his eye and studying the boy for all his usual moles and scars. They were all there. The fifteen-year-old winced and whined at the scrutiny as his father poked and prodded. Eventually, Jerry stepped back and looked him up and down. "What's today's date?"

"What do I look like?" Older Max scoffed. "A calculator?" He chuckled shaking his head. "There's one right up on the wall."

"That's calendar." Theresa corrected him.

"That's what he said…" Young Max thought a lot like his future self and understood him. "Calculator."

"And besides, mom…" Older Max responded. "You still got the old one up. It's 2010 now."

"No, it's not." Theresa came up to face him, her Spanish accent bouncing through her words. "I put that one up just…." She stopped and realized the truth at the same time as Justin. "He's from the future!! Jerry, it's our Max from the future!!!"

"Just like Alex last year!!" Justin deduced the truth.

"Yeah, but this Max…" Jerry looked his future son up and down. "I'd say is only about a few months… maybe another year older. He's going to be a lot easier to send home than adult Alex. You see, time travel is illegal in the Wizard World, but short accidental jaunts here and there are more easily forgivable and a lot easier to correct." He turned back to the fifteen-year-old. "Did you change anything when you got here?"

"Like my underwear?"

"Max," Justin approached his brother. "If you changed anything now, it will alter your time." He turned back to his father. "I've been here the whole time, dad. He didn't change anything."

"Wait!" Young Max spoke up. "He had a soda." Justin, Alex and Jerry looked at him as older Max placed the soda can in his hand and treated it as a bomb about to go off by placing it on the counter carefully before it went off. They all stared at the can as if it was actually going to do something until Jerry wised up.

"I'm pretty sure we can overlook that." Jerry tilted his head a bit unsure, but he really wished he understood a bit more about temporal mechanics. "Max, just say "Chronos Correctus" and you will automatically return to where you belong in time… just so long as it is no more than five years away."

"Why only five years?" Max asked.

"Because contrary to clocks and calendars who use units of three and six…" Justin knew this answer. "Time resonates on a unit of five. Psychics can't predict the future beyond five to ten days, and predictions more than five months or five years into the future never come true. It's part of the cosmic balance of the universe."

"Exactly…" Jerry turned back to Max. "If you were from more than five years in the future, we'd need a much stronger spell to return you." He paused and looked back at him. "You are just barely a year older, right?"

"As far as I know…"

"Yeah…" Theresa pulled young Max close. "Well, if this Max vanishes from home in a years time, we'll know something went wrong…"

"Okay…" Older Max raised his wand. "What am I saying again?"

"Chronos Correctus!" Justin and his father yelled at him and Theresa rolled her eyes.

"Yeah…" Max raised his wand. "Chronos Correctus!" He suddenly winked out and the family breathed a gasp of relief to counter that so fast and easily.

"Thank god…" Justin rolled his eyes and sat relieved. "I don't think I could stand another Max." He hesitated and wondered. Maybe they had solved it too quickly.

"What are you talking about?" Young Max looked at him. "I'm right here!"

Meanwhile, in the present…

Fifteen-year-old Max felt himself pop in from on part of the loft to another part. One second, he was around his family in the kitchen, the next he was standing near the shelf where he was when he zapped Kevin with a spell. No one was around to welcome him back. The room was darker, the furniture was different and it was a lot later in the night.

"Mom, dad… I'm home…" Max called. "I made it back safe." He strolled over to the refrigerator. "Anything to eat?" The refrigerator was mostly bare. There were a few bottles of water, an old pizza, some bread and other stuff, but no leftovers. It was usually a lot fuller. In cases like this, he usually got a sandwich from the shop. There was always stuff to eat in a sandwich shop. He turned for the stairs and headed down into the restaurant looking for something to wet his appetite. From the counter, Justin's girlfriend, Juliet Van Heusen, looked up from her book and watched confused as Max came over and started building a sandwich.

"What are you doing?" She asked him.

"Making a sandwich." Max responded casually. "There's nothing to eat up there."

"Yeah, but…" She started screaming. "Justin, get out here!" After hearing her voice, Justin came rushing out from the kitchen with a beard on his face. He looked around the shop with the three customers eating at tables then back to Juliet. She gestured to Max stacking a sandwich.

"Max?" Justin reacted confused then frustrated. "What are you doing here? Why did you leave the foster home?"

"Justin…" Max made a short scoffing laugh as if his brother was stupid. "Our name is Russo. Not Foster. How did you get the beard? Are you gluing hair to your face again?" Annoyed and perturbed, Justin wanted to scream. With Juliet supporting him, he calmed down and tried again.

"Max…" He spoke slowly. "The judge said you could no longer live on Waverly Place. There's a court order placing you in a foster home."

"What court order?" Max took his sandwich and a soda toward a booth to sit down and eat.

"The court order that put you in the foster home." Juliet spoke slowly to him. "Are you sure he's not brain-damaged?"

"I'm starting to think he is."

"Justin…" Max bit off part of his sandwich chewed it and swallowed it. "I think you're trying to confuse me when you're the one who's confused." He looked around. "Where's mom and dad?'

"Most likely still in prison…"

"Why?"

"Because that's what happens when you stand up in court and scream that you're a wizard before dozens of people." Justin stared annoyed with him.

"Alex did that?" Max started chuckling. "She always up to something…" He continued eating…

"No, you did that!!!" Justin angrily jerked the sandwich from his brother. "You're the reason mom and dad are in prison for five years! You don't scream you're a wizard to real people. County services accused them of brainwashing us because of that and took you away from them. Dad had everything under control until you messed things up. I've had no one teaching me magic for eight months!"

"What?" Max started reacting to the news. Overcome by depression and shock, he started wondering what had happened. "When did all this happen?"

"I'm starting to think he honestly has no idea." Juliet became the voice of reason and sat down next to Justin. She was wearing a wedding ring. So was Justin. "Max," She continued. "When Harper lost her identity, her parents blamed then sued your parents for her condition. The only way for your father to keep from losing the shop was to put it in Justin's name, and since he's nineteen, he became legally an adult until your parents get out of prison in five years."

"Harper lost her identity?" Max was absorbing the news slowly. "Was it something Alex did?"

"I don't know." Justin rubbed his beard. "Alex still has no idea who she is either. She's not as autistic as Harper, but her amnesia and multiple personalities won't let her remember."

"When did this all happen?" Max started sneaking the sandwich back.

"Family game night… April 26, 2009…."

"The night you were trying to break up with Daphne…" Max recalled that night and lifted his sandwich. "Yeah, I was just there…"

Justin suddenly had a realization.

"What?!" Justin and Juliet exchanged looks. "You were just there? What… How… You…" Justin grumbled aggravatedly under his breath as Juliet rubbed his back. "Did you change something in the past?" Justin asked him.

"No!" Max denied it then started to bite into his sandwich. "Well, maybe… I had a soda…" Justin looked at his brother, leaned back and looked toward his wife.

"Max…." Justin clamped his hand over Max's sandwich. "What do you recall happened that night?"

"That's the same night Harper's brain got stuck in Alex's head." Max looked into his brother's eyes.

"Harper's brain is inside Alex???" Justin and Juliet echoed together.

"Yeah…" Max got his dinner back. "Remember, dad fixed it… and you think Alex is stupid…" Max shook his head in defiant disbelief and started eating his sandwich.

"He changed something." He realized how Max thought. "He changed something!" He jumped up screaming. "Alex isn't insane; her brainwaves got mixed up with Harper's when she hit her head!"

"Is that possible?" Juliet was barely keeping up with this time travel business.

"Yes," Justin started planning. "Juliet, Max is recalling another reality! This means, he's not my real brother in this reality, he's my brother from another reality. The Max of this reality is still in the foster home. I know because I studied temporal mechanics and alternate time-lines at Hogwarts. I can use the history of his reality to fix this one. All I have to do is get the spell book, break Alex out of the mental hospital, kidnap Harper from her parents and put their brains in the right bodies. It might not be easy considering their brains merged over all these years, but I'm pretty sure I can do it."

"I want to help!" Max jumped up. "We only need a van, two thousand banana peels, a million marbles and Kellie Pickler as a distraction."

"Or…" Juliet was just a bit smarter. "You can send him back in time to undo everything and get your parents back."

"That works too!" Justin felt like his old self and gestured for his brother to come to the lair. Juliet just shook her head at this Disney-level comedy misunderstanding and voiced a silent "Wow" under her breath, staying behind to watch the shop. In the lair, Justin took the spell book from his father's podium and searched through it for spells involving the mind, body and soul, thumbing through astral projection to incantations involving spirit transference.

"Now, the Cambia Caporum spell might help Alex and Harper, but, Max…" He jumped ahead to spells involving the cosmic energies of the universe. "This is the spell for you to go back in time. This spell is very illegal, and only trained wizards are allowed to use it with permission."

"Cool!" Max grinned excitedly. "I always wanted to see real dinosaurs. Maybe I can get a baby one and bring it back as a pet…."

"Excuse me…" Justin turned to the sofa, checked out a few pillows for size and softness and found the one he wanted, turning rough and smacking his brother upside the head. "Max!!! Focus here! No dinosaurs!! You are going back and getting dad to put Harper's mind back into her body and Alex's back into hers so you can correct whatever you changed in the past."

"But dad already did that!"

Justin hit him with the pillow again.

"Oh yeah…" Max wasn't acting so Max when his brain was rebooted.

"Okay, now, focus and don't screw this up." Justin pulled out his wand and waved it on his brother as he incanted the spell. "I can't believe I'm relying on you to pull this off..." He whispered under breath briefly before the spell. "I call upon the watchtowers of the north, Cronus, Praamzius, Zurvan and all you gods of time, turn back your cosmic rivers and reverse your paths, take this one back to October 26 of…"

Max winked out into a burst of light.

"April 26! April 26!!!" Justin was trying to correct himself. "I meant April 26… April 26, 2009!!! Oh crap…." He paused and felt really stupid. "Well, at least he'll get to tell dad what happened before going to jail…."


	3. Chapter 3

3

October 26, 2007

"I got him…." Justin checked to see if Alex was coming down to head off to her group date with Riley and the other kids from school. Every week, it seemed their father was teaching them something that Alex was using against them, but this time, Justin was ahead of her on this one. Eager for revenge after she had busted them for the paintball fight, he had been inspired by the lesson on pocket elves to borrow a chocolate elf and stick it into Alex's purse as she was going to a restaurant known for it's chocolate desserts. Max held the purse, looked again for Alex getting dressed upstairs to come down and dropped the chocolate elf into his sister's purse.

"In you go, little buddy…." Justin emptied the three-inch tall elf into the purse.

"Oh, it's really nice in here…"

"Go ahead and make yourself real comfortable…" Justin was grinning. "You are so going to love my sister."

"Justin, one last time…" Eleven-year-old Max looked at his brother. "Why are we doing this?"

"Because Alex is evil and needs to be taught a lesson." Justin was grinning at himself. "She's going to a place full of chocolate with something that loves chocolate."

"I like chocolate." Max grinned.

"Yes, but you won't fit in the purse." Justin set his sister's purse where Alex had left it. "Now, Max, I've got to go establish my alibi in the shop. Your job is very important. Make sure you put a chocolate bar in the purse to give our little friend a head start."

"I know what I'm supposed to do." Max scoffed at being treated as if he was stupid. "You can count on me." He watched Justin heading downstairs. "I know what to do." He paused. "What am I doing?"

"I think you're supposed to put that chocolate bar in the purse." Fifteen-year-old Max came up behind eleven-year-old Max.

"Thanks, Max…" Young Max dropped the chocolate bar into the purse. "I'm glad you recalled that."

"Oh, yeah…" Max leaned his had back assuredly and chuckled as he recalled this incident. "The chocolate elf incident… I remember this day well. You see, the first time around, I forgot to put the chocolate bar in Alex's purse, and Justin and I had to go and deliver it in person, but now… I just saved us the trip, so… mission accomplished."

"This is going to drive Alex crazy!" Young Max shined like a juvenile delinquent.

"You know, " Older Max placed his arm on his younger self. "You are going to go far, my friend… Hey, wait…" He snapped to attention. "Where are mom and dad?"

"Down in the shop…" His past counterpart answered.

"Thanks a lot, mini-me…" Older Max grinned and spun around as Alex started coming down from her bedroom. She noticed her extra brother and her younger brother, took a few more steps then stopped and did a double-take. Did she just saw two copies of her brother? She shrugged it off, ignored it and took her purse from the sofa to leave for her date.

"Mom! Dad!" Downstairs, Max rushed into the shop after his father checking customers and his mother running the register. He hugged his mother and then his dad. "You're out of jail! I saved you!"

"Uh, yeah…" Jerry Russo reacted confused. "You sure did…" He looked at his wife confused. She had no idea what fantasy Max was living though either. Theresa and Jerry looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Justin walked up from taking sandwich orders. There was something different about his brother. He was taller and somehow… older.

"And Justin thought I was going to screw it up after I changed history…" Max stood shaking his head. "He's so stupid, and by the way, that beard looked so fake."

"Beard?" Justin was just as confused as his parents. "Changed history? Max… Have you been… oh, um, time-traveling?"

"Hello…" Max knocked on his brother's head. "You sent me back after Alex and Harper got their brains mixed up." He looked back to his parents. "He doesn't remember…"

"Alex and Harper got their brains mixed up?" Jerry was slowly starting to wonder why his son looked older and taller. "Uh, Max, son, I've got something to tell you. Alex and Harper never got their brains mixed up."

"I know…" Max was so proud of himself. "I just changed history!"

"Mom, dad, let me…" Fifteen-year-old Justin stepped forward and took his future fifteen-year-old brother aside. "Max, you didn't travel back to your time. You traveled back even further and are telling us future things that haven't happened yet."

"I know that!" Max was speaking slowly. "I'm here to save your lives." He grinned happily to his brother.

"I've got a spell to send him home." Jerry pulled Max behind the counter to take him to the lair. Justin and his mother just shook their heads tiredly confused. They both knew Max thought differently, but apparently, he was going to keep getting more confused as he grew older. The current eleven-year-old Max Russo came down from the lair.

"Hey, mom…" He came over where his future self once stood. "Can other-Max stay for dinner?"

"Not tonight, Maxie, he gives me a headache…" She rubbed her head tiredly.

Five years later, Theresa was rubbing her head again tiredly and resting her feet. In this 2010, she was three-months pregnant with her fourth child, and Justin was glad he was heading off in the fall to attend Hogwarts for his college-level classes in magic and mysticism before the new screaming Russo infant arrived. That just left Max to deal with the new kid. Something had changed… something that was once keeping Justin home and was now encouraging his parents to have another child. In the shop, Harper was okay and living with the Russos in Alex's old room as fifteen-year-old Max unknowingly returned to yet another altered reality.

"Harper, I'm back!" Max came down from the lair and hugged her.

"From the basement?" She asked him confusingly and continued helping in the shop.

"Justin…" Max turned to his brother helping in the shop. "I did it."

"Cleaned the basement, I hope…" Justin delivered a sandwich to a customer, and Max returned to his father.

"Dad…" Max grinned to his father. "How was prison?"

"How was what?" Jerry Russo did not have those memories to that Jerry Russo. "Max, son, is there gas leaking down there?"

"No…" Max was grinning to be back in his own time. "I just glad all that stuff is over, and Alex and Harper are okay now."

"Alex and Harper…" Jerry looked to Harper as his foster daughter and suddenly recalled something else. "Oh! That reminds me!" He stopped chopping vegetables for the sandwich area and pulled out a partial chocolate bar in a plastic zip-lock bag. He took the bar from the bag, cut off a tiny splinter from it then placed the larger bar aside. Max watched the strange ritual as his father next pulled out a tiny dollhouse barely a foot high with glass windows and a painted door, opening the roof and dropping the chocolate sliver inside quickly.

"Here, you go princess…" Jerry fed something in the miniature house.

"Chocolate!!!" A tiny voice squeaked inside it! "Nummy-nummy-nummy-num-num!!!" Max leaned over and peeked inside it. Down inside the tiny room, he saw Alex all of three inches high and wearing a brown bustier with brown shoes and fairy wings. She grabbed the chocolate crumb from her father in both her tiny hands and began quickly devouring it as fast as she could get her tiny mouth around it. Jerry closed the box quickly as his fairy daughter started going crazy from the sugar rush.

"Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!" She called out excitedly from the shaking box.

"That's Alex?" Max asked.

"Yes…" Jerry placed his daughter's home under the counter with him.

"What happened to her?"

"What do you mean what happened to her?" This Jerry Russo was a more aggravated, frustrated and annoyed person. "You know full well what happened to her." He kept his beloved daughter close to him all the time at the counter as he worked in the shop and talked to her when he could.

"Yeah, Max…" Justin wandered up nervously. "You remember, Alex took a chocolate elf from the lair and got herself bit by him… She then ate so much chocolate that she turned into a chocolate fairy." He was a brother with a horrible secret, a secret he had not told his father in over five years.

"But that's not what happened…" Max recalled the real history. "I thought we went to the restaurant and brought Alex home after she embarrassed herself."

"What?" Jerry looked over the sandwich counter at his boys. "What was that?"

"Yeah, dad…" Max was being way too helpful. "Remember…" He didn't notice Justin trying to get him to stop talking. "Alex ate about five hundred dollars worth of chocolate when you found her and brought her home after we put that chocolate elf in her… Oh, wait, Alex took the rap for that until we confessed." He turned back to Justin.

Justin slapped his head out of disgust. No one had confessed to anything in this timeline. Jerry had blamed Alex, and Justin and Max had covered it up successfully over all these years, nut now, the truth was out…

"What?!" Jerry finally got the truth, grabbed his sons and dragged them into the kitchen. "Harper, watch the shop!!" He grabbed Justin by the sleeve and Max by the collar and took them into the kitchen to discuss their wizardry in private.

"You idiot!!!" Justin was freaking. "We had a pact! Don't tell dad we put the elf in Alex's purse! Why couldn't you stop talking?!"

"Let me get this straight…" Jerry was so mad he could barely talk. "It was you two who put the elf in your sister's purse and left me blaming Alex for five years?!!! You two? You two?!! You idiots are the reason your sister is now a chocolate fairy?"

"Hey, dad…" Another dirty and dusty Max entered the kitchen. "I got the basement clean. Can I wash up and go see… Hey, it's Other-Max! Hey, Justin, he's the one who reminded me to put the chocolate bar in Alex's purse five years ago." He suddenly recalled the pact with his brother then turned to his father. "Not that we had anything to do with that."

"Okay," Jerry turned from furious to surprised. "Now, I'm confused." Justin was perplexed. There were two Maxes and one of them had been traveling in time?

"Let me get this straight…" He figured it out first. "If you hadn't traveled in time and reminded yourself to put the chocolate in Alex's purse, Alex would not have turned into a chocolate fairy and we could have been in a little trouble five years ago than a lot of trouble now!"

"Sounds about right." The first Max responded.

"Now I get it!!!" Jerry now understood the extra Max. "You two morons are in trouble…" He matched Justin with the Max from the basement. "And you're the one who has to be sent back in time to stop Alex from eating that chocolate so she doesn't become a chocolate fairy!"

"Again?" Max looked upset and frustrated. "Dad, I just saved you from jail. Isn't that worth anything?"

"Jail?" Justin recalled future Max in 2007 talking about jail. "Max, you prevented that future when Alex became the chocolate fairy."

"How much time-traveling have you been doing?" Jerry looked at his extra son.

"A lot!" Max shook his head tiredly. "I've seen myself twice, and Justin married to Juliet."

"Who's Juliet?" Justin asked.

"She's a vampire you're dating." Max reminded his brother. "Keep up, Justin. This isn't a Defense Against The Dark Arts class." He chuckled a bit at his brother for not being psychic enough to know what was happening.

"I'm dating a vampire?" Justin reacted over his alternate counterpart. "Is she hot?"

"Justin!!!" Jerry groaned a bit. "Look, somehow, I need to send you back in time to fix the past and still get you back so this Max can get home and yet not lose you when history is changed."

"Otherwise, I would meet his Justin and Juliet… okay…" Justin got it. "Would I still have to be punished when I get back? I mean… if Alex isn't a fairy when I get back, there won't be any reason for me to…"

"I'll cross that river when I get to it."

"What about me?" Native Max looked up.

"You're grounded for turning your sister into a fairy until she gets back to normal." Jerry pointed his finger at his real son instead of the time-lost duplicate.

"Great…." The boy looked at his counterpart. "I'm such a good looking guy…"


	4. Chapter 4

4

December 11, 2008

Neither Justin nor Alex had come home to do their chores or work in the shop. Tribeca Prep was just a few blocks from the shop and Max headed back after regular school hours to find his brother and bring him back with his sister. After regular school hours, the basketball team was training in the gym and a few teachers hung back to finish a few things. Principal Paul Laritate checked his watched and hurried home to his mother.

"Mr. Russo…" The fat man saw fourteen-year-old Max coming round the corner. "What are you doing here when you don't have to be?"

"My dad sent me to get Justin and Alex and bring them home." The boy answered.

"Really…" The fat man stopped at the main entrance. "Well, your sister missed all her classes, but I'm sure your brother is in up the library. Afterward, you three can mosey on along now."

"You really like that cowboy stuff, right?"

"Am I that obvious…" The man tipped back a ten-gallon western hat to his thin head of hair and started out to his convertible with the bullhorns as a hood ornament. Max looked back at him, made a face and looked back at the school.

"Justin, Alex…" Max screamed rather than run round the school looking for his siblings. "Dad wants you home now!" He looked round again. Nothing. Just the distant sounds of the basketball team.

"Hey, Max…" Max came up from behind his counterpart. "Oh no…" He realized he was not in his own time. "Justin!!!" He started screaming to the heavens. "You didn't send me into the future far enough!!!" He dropped his head tiredly. "I'm really starting to hate time travel."

"Hey, Max…" Young Max looked to his future counterpart. "Dad wants us to find Justin and Alex…"

"They're missing, huh…" Older Max tried thinking. "I bet they're looking for me or…" He looked to Alex's locker, wandered over and opened it up to look inside it. Right on top was a black-and-white journal belonging to Kevin Joseph Mitchell.

"Here you go…" He gave it to his counterpart. "They're in this."

"How do you know this?"

"I'm from the future. I know this."

"You're from the future?" Young Max was skeptical about his other self. "If you're from the future, why didn't you come for a visit last Thanksgiving?"

"I was there!" Max scoffed. "It's you who wasn't there."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Not really…" Max and his counterpart turned to head to Waverly Place. "Come one, I'll explain to dad what happened…" They headed back to the shop as if they were twin brothers. There were a few odd looks along the way, a stunned neighbor and a perplexed shopkeeper. Maybe it was a look-alike cousin to the Russo boy. As they too reached the Waverly Station Sub Shop, it was Jerry and Theresa's chance to look confused.

"I send you off to find your brother and sister and you come back with yourself?" Jerry was stunned. "Only you could somehow do this…"

"Allow me…" Max stopped his prior self, advanced on his father and slid forward the journal. "Dad, Justin and Alex are trapped in Kevin's short story… and I need a quick easy spell to get me back to my own time."

"Your own time…" Theresa reacted confused.

"Own time? You've been time traveling…" Jerry looked at his future son. "Do you know how illegal…"

"…it is for wizards to time travel?" Max finished for him. "Yes, I'm realizing that now because I keep changing history, but this time… I know I got it right. You get Kevin to finish his story before Alex becomes a vampire, and everything is all right because he likes her and she likes him. Just give me a spell to get home."

"Chronos correctus." Jerry announced. "It's also good for jumping alternate timelines caused by…"

"Don't confuse me!" Max was getting frustrated. "Keep it simple! See you, younger Max."

"See you older Max." Max watched himself say the spell and pop out. "Don't forget to come by back for Christmas!" He grinned with a light laugh. "I finally got a brother who spends time with me!"

"Time travel?" Theresa was confused. "Vampires?"

"Well…" Jerry checked out the journal. "I hope he got it right this time."

In yet another history-altered present, Max appeared in his own time, but again… things were not right. The shop was dark and boarded up from the inside. The floor was filled with trash and debris, the tables and chairs piled up haphazardly on the booths. It looked haunted. Just a few lights showed the floor was dirty and grimy with patches of dark dried material flaking away into dust. It looked haunted and foreboding. There were too many shadows for things to hide in from him.

"What did I do now?!" Max screamed frustrated. "Dad!!!" Her marched through the kitchen toward their lair. It looked worse. The room was trashed with the furniture pushed to the walls, the books and artifacts thrown to the floor and a large black casket propped upright against the desks stacked against the portal to the wizard community. Max looked around once the room lit by candles and struggling flickering lights.

"Something tells me I don't want to look in that thing." He started sneaking past it, but he had wakened something up from within it. Four fingers poked out from inside the lid and started opening it up. Max hovered backward as the casket opened wider and wider… It was Alex, but she was older… much older with the figure of a centerfold, long cascading dark hair shaping her bodice and a dark period dress of forbidden black and sinister violet colors. She looked as if she was part horror movie hostess Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and part Lilith, the vampire which pop-star Michayla played in the movie, "_Haunted High School_." She had the body of a Playboy Centerfold, the figure of a super-model and the presence of an over-sexed goddess of the dead. Her head creaked as she noticed Max and stepped out of her coffin as a creature of the night.

"Alex…" Max chuckled. "You've changed." He looked at her chest. "Were you stung by a bee?"

"Max…" His vampiric sister ran her tongue over her front teeth now joined by two fangs. "Didn't I already kill you and drink your blood? I mean… I'm pretty sure I already did that."

"But you can't be a vampire…" Max backed from her scared to death. "Justin saved you from becoming one after I warned him and… I stopped myself from warning him in 2008." He realized a lot faster this time what he had screwed up in the past. Alex's eyes went all black as her vampiric tendency overwhelmed her. A loud roar came from her non-corporeal lungs as her thirst for blood overwhelmed her and she stormed out after of her brother into the shop. Max raced out from the lair and ran into two more intruders. He recognized Juliet Van Heusen, Justin's girlfriend, but who was the blonde with the hammer and stakes?

"Juliet, save the kid!!!" Buffy Summers charged Alex firing a water rifle filled with Holy Water. As Juliet pulled Max to safety, Alex turned herself to black smoke and started filling the shop. Pulling on a mask to protect her own person, Juliet watched Buffy pulled out a grenade that detonated and filled the shop with artificial sunlight. Driven back by that burst of light, Alex was exiled back into the lair of the deserted sandwich shop with Buffy the Vampire Slayer coming right after her. There were a lot of screams and howls going on as Max lifted his head up from the floor.

"You saved me." Max looked at Juliet.

"Yeah…" Juliet looked again. "Why aren't you dead? Justin specifically said…"

"Don't worry about it." Max looked at her relieved.

"You're going to have to be faster to kill me!" Alex screamed at Buffy in the lair. There was a lot of noise back there as vampire met vampire-slayer.

"Not faster… just smarter…" Buffy screamed as her chakram ricocheted off the wall, out into the shop and ricocheted off another wall, a fixture and back through the kitchen into the lair.

"Justin thought he was smart and look what happened to him!"

"Yeah, but he got careless!!!" Buffy jumped backward and ran along the wall as Alex screamed just barely losing her head to the chakram as Buffy came at her with a stake. With that attack, Alex turned into a bat and started escaping. Juliet turned herself into a bat to fight Alex in that form and avenge Justin's murder.

"I don't need to see anymore." Max was tired of this already. "Chronos Correctus!" He cast the spell again and jumped in time again as Juliet and Alex exploded from the shop battling each other in mid-flight.


	5. Chapter 5

5

October 26, 2008….

"Whoa…" Max stumbled backward a bit and bumped into several Wiz-Tech students in the Russo family loft. There were a lot of them in the school robes. They ranged from thirteen to eighteen, male and female, from the brightest students to the laziest slackers. At least, the room was well lit and no one was screaming. From the door to the balcony, Max looked round and scratched his head with his wand. He pushed around the five at the dinner table, the eight playing a board game on the floor and the couple gossiping at the refrigerator.

"Hey, Hugh…" He finally found someone he knew. "Hugh, what's everyone from Wiz-Tech doing here."

"Hey, Max…" Hugh Normous lifted his tiny glasses up and down. "Didn't your parents tell you. There's a lot of plastic balls at Wiz-Tech and your father is letting a lot of us stay here."

"Plastic balls, you say…" Max thought back. "That means I'm at the time Ronald Longcape tried to make Alex evil and take over Wiz-Tech."

Ronald Longcape popped up from behind the kitchen counter after hearing his name. How did Max learn his secret evil plan?

"Wait…" Hugh looked at Max. "Are you saying that Ronald is behind the trouble at Wiz-Tech?"

"I'm not saying anything." Max chuckled thinking he was being smart. "If I say something, I'll change time, but if I don't say anything, I won't change time. Justin defeated him the first time, he'll just do it again."

Ronald looked across the room to Justin talking to Alex.

"Whatever you say, Max." Hugh nodded his head trying to understand.

"Perfect!" Max finally felt smart. "Chronos Correctus!!!" He sent himself forward in time. Ronald looked back to him.

"Wait!!!" He looked around. "Where'd he go? What'd he say?" He walked around the counter looking for the boy. "How did he learn my secret evil plan?" He threatened Hugh.

"I don't know." Hugh cringed at being threatened. "What do you want with all those balls at Wiz-Tech?"

Ronald just groaned disgustedly and noticed another Max coming up the stairs from the shop. He looked younger and was now in different clothes. He slid over to confront him.

"Max…" Ronald grinned looking at the boy. "Do you and your brother like Jello?"

"Are you kidding?" Young Max grinned. "I'd live in it if I had a chance!"

"Max…" Ronald knew he had someone to spend time with Alex's current boyfriend, Dean Moriarty. "This is going to be like a dream come true for you…"

A year and a half later….

"Finally… Now, I can…" Max looked around the Subway shop and saw it was still in ruins. "Crap and a half, what did I do wrong this time?" He groaned disgustedly and lifted his wand up to cast himself back again. "I am getting so sick and tired…"

"Who's out there?" Someone called from inside the shop.

"Harper?" Max looked right toward the kitchen. Looking out over the preparation area, Harper peered nervously out to the shop area from the kitchen and turned round to come out the door. She was dressed all in black with a long-sleeved sweater and long skirt down to her ankles. Her long brown hair was the longest it had ever been, reaching down her back to her waist and thighs. Her face was an ashen white, her expression confused and shocked to see him as it shook in short confused trembling motions. She glided up to him cautiously in disbelief as if he was a ghost.

"Max?" She couldn't believe it.

"Uh, yeah…" Max looked at her. "Uh, Harper… What's going on here?"

"What's going on here?" Harper repeated his question. "What's going on here?! What do you think?!!"

"Ah…." Max smiled and nodded his head. "Alex hasn't been doing her chores." He was grinning and nodding his head. Harper looked at him as if he was nuts, started laughing with him a few minutes then punched him in the stomach as hard as she could. Max suddenly went down like a sack of potatoes, his wand sliding away from him a few feet.

"I don't know where you've been since Alex took over…" Angry, upset and frustrated, Harper walked over a few feet, took Max's wand and looked back to him curled up on the floor. What had happened to make this sweet, jovial and exuberant girl a person of seething rage and hostility?

"Alex took over?" Max quivered on the floor.

"Like you don't know!!!" Harper grabbed Max by the shirt and started dragging him back into the kitchen toward the freezer door and the Wizard Lair behind it. "You know very well that when Alex went to Wiz-Tech with Ronald, she returned evil… well, a lot more evil than before… and took over Waverly Place and the rest of Manhattan."

"That's not what happened!" Max recalled the other history. "Justin and I stopped her, and… Oh god, I changed history again."

"While you've been gone…" Harper lifted Max up to face the Waverly Family Spell Book on its podium. "I've been the only person living on Waverly Place. I've been studying your family's book of spells, and I think I found a spell to turn me into a wizard to fight Alex."

"Why?" Max stood and looked at her. He looked over the room. It looked basically the same except for the bed and the stockpile of food and reading materials with the television. It looked as if Harper had been living in it. "Just get Justin to do it."

"Justin's dead."

"Justin's dead???"

"Alex killed him and stole his magic." Harper revealed to Max. "I thought she had killed you, but since you're here…"

"What about my parents?"

"Alex killed them and stole their souls." Harper sighed impatiently and turned through the spell book as Max grieved in shock of this horrible timeline he had created. "Alex has been stealing a lot of souls and getting extremely powerful, but with this spell, I think I can fight her." She gave Max his wand back. "Now, say this spell and make me a wizard."

"Harper…" Max looked at the spell book. Harper had been writing all over it, making notes, folding over pages, mixing and matching spells and altering the words. "I don't think this is a good…"

"Hey!!!" Harper knocked him over the head with a bottle. "You either say this spell and make me a wizard or else I'm painting the walls in here with your blood! What's it going to be?!!"

"I liked you better in that other time." Max cringed and looked back at the book. In the margin, Harper had written a strange spell in blue ink with words mixed from several incantations and hexes. He raised his wand at Harper. "_Incantare incantare expectro immortalis, incantare incantare expectro immortalis espiritas, expectro immortalis espiritas incantatum, mystica incantare desmortante legionus corpantante_…"

"It's working!" Harper started grinning as her body started tingling. It felt as if her body was electrical, her skin pulsating and her eyes lighting up like two Xmas tree ornaments. "It's working! I feel myself getting stronger!! I'm getting more… It's really starting to hurt!!!" She started screaming in pain as something in her head started pounding from the inside of her skull. Her eyes felt as if they were on fire; her bones as heavy as cement and her heart pounding so hard it was about to explode from her chest. Max watched as she dropped to the floor convulsing and trembling, her sweater starting to grow taut on her growing body…

"What did you do to me, you little freak!!!!" She roared with five voices overlapping her own.

"Uh…" Max forced a nervous chuckle and started backing away. "I don't think I want to be here to see what you turn into." He pointed his wand on himself. "Chronos Correctus…" He vanished in a pulse of light as Harper screamed in pain as her sweater started ripping open along the seams and her skirt popping apart at the waist. She was screaming in pain so much she could barely breathe!


	6. Chapter 6

6

January 11, 1996

There was a layer of snow over Waverly Place and ice over the sidewalks and streets. A slight breeze whistled through the edifice. Cooped up at home, five-year-old Justin Russo colored in his coloring book and four-year-old Alex Russo colored in hers on the coffee table. The loft was filled with the furniture from Jerry and Theresa's first apartment. A twelve-inch Sony color TV with rabbit ear antennae were the best these kids had to watch cartoons, but they could not hear much with their baby brother screaming. At nine months old, Max was the fussiest infant so far. Justin was a breeze compared to Alex, but Max definitely outdid Alex when it came to lung-power.

"Alex, you're supposed to color inside the lines." Justin the kindergartener had a mullet of dark hair and two big brown eyes.

"Oh, everything has got to be rules, rules, rules with you…" Pre-schooler Alex's long hair was pulled into two long pigtails that swayed as her tiny hands rubbed her eyes and covered her ears. "Mommie, tell Max to be quiet. I keep making mistakes because of him."

"I'm trying, Alex, I'm trying…" Theresa kept bouncing her unhappy infant. "I just don't get it. I fed you, changed your diaper, burped you…" Max's tiny face was so red. All she saw was that tiny mouth stretched open wide screaming. "What do you want?"

"Peanut butter." Max looked at himself as a baby. "He wants peanut butter."

"Thank you so much…" Theresa looked at her future son, took the jar of peanut butter down and got a spoon to put it on. The second it went into her baby boy's mouth, he went quiet and she went into shock. Who was this kid?

"Where did you come from?!" She spun around to protect her baby. "Look, don't hurt me! I don't have… Wait, aren't you that kid that went to see _The Empire Strikes Back_ with me and my husband back when we were dating?"

"What? You remember that?" Max had time-traveled before. His father had sent him into the future successfully before; he could do it again! "Yeah, yeah, that's right! He can help me get home again!"

"Oh…" Theresa looked at her baby boy in his bassinet happily sucking on the plastic baby spoon of peanut butter and then leaned the other way to call down to the shop. "Jerry, one of your relatives is back!"

"Relatives?" Jerry dropped something and left the shop attended by Connie Finkle, the mother of a young girl the same age as Alex. He stomped up the stairs fearful something was wrong with one of his kids and came to a sudden stop on the top landing. Dressed in a white shirt, blue apron and blue jeans, Nineties Jerry had a full thick head of hair and a mustache. He looked again and then retested his sight. "Max… Max, you're back again?"

"Max?" Theresa looked again. "Oh, is this little Maxie's namesake? I didn't know."

"Uh, no, Theresa, heh…" Jerry came over to his wife. "Uh, remember when I told you I was a Wizard…"

"Yes…" She beamed happily. "And I love you anyway."

"Well…." Jerry was speaking slowly. "Max is also a wizard, and, heh, you're going to love this. He's actually our Max… from the future!" He grinned excitedly.

"Our Max…" Theresa responded with apprehension.

"Hi mom…" Max grinned and waved his hand.

"From the future…" She was slowly getting it. "And those two with you were…." She looked back to her other babies. Toddler Justin looked up grinning as the future model son. Juvenile Alex the future diva had a crayon up her nose. "And that's how you know about the peanut butter…"

"I like peanut butter." Max confirmed it.

"Jerry…" Theresa came over to her. "Is this normal for wizards? Relatives popping in from the future?"

"No, actually time-traveling is illegal because one can create all sorts of weird tangents from altering the past."

"You can say that again…" Max took out a spoon to get a spoonful of peanut butter. "I travel back, I travel forward. I get home, things are wrong when I get there. Dad, please help me get home to the right Waverly Place."

"What spell have you been using?"

"Chronos Correctus." Max responded. He repeated it. "Chronos Correctus!! Why isn't it working?"

"Max, son…" Jerry took him aside. "That's a short jaunt spell. It won't work because you traveled back in time too far this time, and well… I don't know if you know this, but… I gave up my wizard powers when I married your mother. I can't send you back to the future this time."

"What about Justin or Alex?" He looked to his siblings. They were two toddlers.

"They don't have their wizard powers yet." Jerry looked to him. "Max, you may be stuck here a while."

"What?" Max looked down to toddler Alex grinning at him.

"Want to be my boyfriend?" His sister looked up at him and asked while giggling and chewing on her fingers.

"I don't even like going in the bathroom after you." He turned back to look upon his father. "Dad, what about another wizard like Professor Danvers? He's pretty powerful."

"I don't know him."

"Uncle Kelbo?"

"Don't say that name! I don't want…."

"Aloha!!!" Tall, and large and dressed in Hawaiian shirt, grass skirt and shorts, Kelbo Russo was now standing in the lair. He had a few Polynesian leis on his shoulders, a fruit daiquiri in one hand and a large drumstick in the other hand. He was part Santa Claus and part Bill Cosby and all annoying to his brother as his niece and nephew danced around worshipping him. When Jerry thought about how obnoxious his younger brother got with his wizard powers, he wished he'd given them to his sister. "Did someone call me?" Kelbo handed Jerry his glass and maneuvered to his attractive sister-in-law while biting at his drumstick. "Hey, Theresa, you got any bicarbonate. Oh, of course, you got some… you married my brother!"

"Hello, Kelbo…" Theresa knew her brother-in-law as a guy who could eat an entire wedding cake in less than an hour.

"Hey, sis-in-law…" Kelbo promised his brother's kids gifts and turned to his newest nephew. "Hey, small fry… Is that peanut butter you're eating? How much do you like peanut butter?" He enchanted infant Max.

"I love peanut butter." The baby talked as Theresa reacted annoyed. Jerry was growing annoyed, but older Max was laughing.

"Kelbo, take that spell off my kid!!!" Jerry screamed at his little brother. "I need you to put a spell on my other kid."

"Other kid? You had another kid? Already???" Kelbo removed the spell and saw teenaged Max. "Congratulations, it's a teenager!!!"

"He's Max too!" Jerry was starting to get annoyed. "He traveled back from the future."

"The future, wow!" Kelbo looked the young man over. "Are there flying cars in the future? Are we all wearing silver jumpsuits? Did Madonna get that Academy Award? By the way, you do know that it's illegal…"

"…For wizards to travel through time. I know!!!" Max was getting tired of hearing that.

"Kelbo…" Jerry was hoping he wasn't going to regret this. He took a hesitant breath and draped his arm around his brother as a token of brotherly camaraderie. "I need you to use the Shadows of Infinity spell to get Max home."

"Return him with a spell?" Kelbo resisted. "That ain't no fun!" He turned back to Teenaged Max. "Max, have you seen the movie, _Back to the Future_? In it, they got a Delorean that travels in time. We'll use that instead!"

"Kelbo, just use the spell!"

"I don't remember the spell."

"I can teach you to you."

"I ain't no good at book learning, but then..." Kelbo looked at Teenaged Max. "Since he's here, apparently neither is he!"

"Kelbo!"

"You need to lighten up, bro…" Kelbo was grinning. "You got a vein in your head that's like throbbing…"

"I know about the vein!" Jerry felt as if he was in a really bad Disney Channel comedy moment.

"Come on, Nephew-of-Christmas-Future…" Kelbo chuckled and pulled Future Max closer. "Let's let your dad calmed down as we go scare the bejesus out of some tourists in Africa. I love the looks in their faces when a casual tyrannosaurus rex struts it's way across the Serenghetti."

"So let me get this straight…" Max realized he was bonding with his uncle years before he could talk. "Dad had that vein long before Alex started coming home late and stealing his credit card?" The two of them vanished in a burst of mystically conjured dimensional energy. Upon hearing his son, Jerry spun round and looked to his wife. Alex was going to be a holy terror? She looked so innocent at four years old….

Meanwhile, almost fifteen years later…

A silver Delorean came out of the Hoboken Tunnel into Manhattan with wheels taken from the 1950s. It shot past Principal Laritate several blocks away at Tribeca Prep and turned toward Waverly Place with wheels spinning, sparks spewing from its exhaust and leaving behind a license plate reading "Go Time" spinning at the crosswalk. It roared past Ben Bailey in the Cash Cab with police officers charging after it, but past Delvecchio's Restaurant, their patrol car turned into an ice cream truck and their uniforms became Good Humor outfits. Laughing his head off, Kelbo nearly drove over Harper racing across the street and then squealed to a stop. She looked at the burning and roaring automobile and headed into the Waverly Station Sub Shop. One wing of the Delorean popped open as Max jumped out laughing, carrying a flag from the Trojan War, a spear from the Roman Empire and a silver chalice from Camelot. Hyper and over-enthusiastic, he was laughing his head off at his adventure.

"Roads?" Kelbo was dressed as Sherlock Holmes. "I don't need any roads!!!" He laughed his head off.

"Thanks again, Uncle Kelbo!!!" Max pulled the door shut with his free hand. His uncle waved at him, grinned and pressed his foot on the gas, spinning the burning period tires and suddenly tearing down the street at eighty miles per hour. Turning to his parent's shop, Max crashed and clanged twice trying to get through the doors before turning the flag and spear ahead and pushing his way through. His dad looked up from taking an order. Alex glanced up from her homework at a table, and Theresa lightly jumped from the ruckus. Dumping his relics off to the side, the youngest Russo was back home…

"Yes, yes…" Max wandered round grinning and happy. "The shop is okay, Alex isn't a vampire, Harper isn't twenty feet tall and Dad isn't in jail…" He dropped to his knees hysterically happy. "I'm home!!!" He stretched his arms out tired and exhausted but happy.

"What did he say about me?" Alex leaned toward her father.

"He said you're not a vampire, and I'm not in jail." Jerry heard him.

"Max…" Theresa lifted him up. "Are you using? What are you shooting up?" She pulled his sleeves up for hypodermic scars. "You had better not be using drugs, buster!" She pointed her finger as a warning at him.

"And you're not pregnant!!!" Max looked at his mother and hugged her. He was so happy!!!

"Jerry!!!" Theresa looked to him for support.

"Well, you're not, I hope!!!" Jerry shot back. She shot him another look back.

"Dad…" Max tiredly sauntered past his sister at one of the tables doing her homework, stumbled to his father and hugged the man happy and content. "The stuff I've seen… the stuff I've been through…"

"School was that difficult, huh?"

"School?" Max looked around a bit. "Um, uh, is traveling in time still illegal in the Wizard World?"

"Yes…" Jerry looked back at him. "Yes, it is!"

"Well, thank god I've not been doing that!" The boy came behind the counter, took a cup and started filling it at the soda fountain. Alex actually had her schoolbooks out and was studying with Harper at the table closest to the register area. A calm relaxing drink, Max relaxed as he came up behind his sister doing her homework.

"So, Alex…" He spoke. "How's Kevin?"

"Who's Kevin?'

Max suddenly stopped smiling. At that moment, there was a lot of noise going on outside of the shop. There were a lot of yells and screaming, and Justin jumped through the side entryway dressed in a leather jacket, an old blue t-shirt and blue jeans. He hugged the floor out of sight as the guys outside looking for him peered through the windows, pounded their fists and cursed at Justin, promising to beat him up if they saw him. Once they headed off, Justin slowly rose back up to his feet.

"No one answer the telephone for a few days, okay?" He requested strongly. "And if anyone comes here looking for me, I'm in Australia on a "Girls Gone Wild" tour."

"Justin…" Theresa was upset. "What did you do?"

"Nothing…" Justin scoffed and chuckled nervously looking behind him. "Those two sisters I was dating may have five very scary older brothers… and that car I sold may… just may… have been stolen."

"Justin!" Jerry was livid. "What the heck is wrong with you? Do you really want to be on _America's Most Wanted_ that bad?"

"Is this a trick question?"

"Justin!" Alex jumped up to yell. "You promised you'd be here to study! Do you realize if you fail again I'll be a Senior next year and you'll still be a Junior?"

"Alex…" Justin grinned and tried charming her. "My short, nerdy, dateless sister… We're wizards! We can get away with anything!" He grinned that big stupid smile at her.

Max dropped his soda and slapped his forehead in disbelief at this skewered timeline.

"Harper…" Justin swung his head dashingly pompous to his sister's best friend. "You know I can't stand an empty seat next to me in the movies…."

"I'll go with you anywhere, stud muffin!!!" She growled toward him, jumped up and kissed him with her left leg wrapped around his waist. Alex started feeling her lunch coming up and looked away to fight it. Even Jerry covered his eyes than watch it. Theresa covered Max's eyes with her hand.

"Justin, I am not doing your chores again…" Alex screamed. "You are the worse brother in the history of…." She watched Justin and Harper racing away to get away from her. "Man, do I hate him!" She looked back to see if they were gone. "Why does she keep going back to him?" Alex didn't get it. "He's keeps cheating on her with other girls, but she keeps taking him back."

"Where did I go wrong with him?" Jerry shook his head. "Well, at least I've got a daughter to be proud of." He pulled Alex close and kissed her. Alex shined and beamed happily at being the model daughter.

"Let me guess…" Max was becoming an expert on the family. "After I was in 1996, you started paying more attention to Alex and started paying less attention to Justin."

"Yeah, I guess I…" Jerry did a double take. "What do you mean when you were in 1996? Max, have you been time-traveling?"

"Excuse me…" Max turned and started pounding his head into the wall.

"Max!!!" Jerry stopped him. "Have you been time-traveling?"

"Hello, father…" Another Max entered the shop wearing glasses, a small suit and tie. "I regret but to tell you but your other son is showing a disgraceful show of attention on the bench at the bus stop with Miss Finkle. It really is a rather disgraceful show of attention." He spoke with a faint British accent and had a higher IQ. He was a bit more stuffy and austere with a better up-bringing that his counterpart. Max looked at his sissy counterpart using the big words and started smacking his head into the wall again.

"Max, have you been time-traveling?" Jerry stopped him. "Do you know it's illegal for…"

"…Wizards to travel through time. I know!!!" Max was so getting tired of hearing that. "Please, just let me stay… every time I travel through time, I screw something up and everything is weird again. This is the closest things have been to being normal. Please… don't send me back in time again."

"How many times have you been sent back in time?"

"I don't know…" Max was losing it. "I lost count after three!"

"Max…" Jerry looked to Teresa, his wife, his daughter and his real son and pulled the young man into the kitchen. "Max, this is serious now. If you can't remember how much time traveling you've done… I won't send you back again…."

"Thanks, dad…"

"I need to turn you over to the Wizard Council."

"What?"

"You're not my real son." Jerry felt extremely sorry to see the boy look so terrified. "That Max out there is…" He paused a moment barely able to do what he was doing. "Max," Jerry continued. "They'll find a way to send you home and maybe take your magic away for a few years… Son, I'm sorry…"

"Dad," Alex stood listening in the doorway. "I can take him home."

"No, Alex…" Jerry refused to let her do it. "You've got a perfect record. I can't let you ruin it by…"

"But dad…"

"Not only that, but then you'd get stuck in his world with his Alex and his Justin." Jerry shook his head. "I won't let you do it." He gave her a warning by shaking his finger at him. "Now, show him into the lair and give him a place to rest… I'll deal with this all later." Jerry left to return to the shop and Alex looked back to Max with tears going down her eyes. Lost in time in a timeline not his own, the tortured young man turned around into the corner and tilted his head up leaning on the water pipe out of deep frustration. After everything he'd been through, he was going to lose his powers…

"Max…" This Alex had more compassion than his. "What am I like in your world?" Her voice asked faintly.

"Different…" Max's voice quivered and shook out of sadness. "You're… you're… You get me to do your chores, you tease Justin for being smart, you cast spells when dad tells you not to, you break the rules, you…"

"You mean…" Alex realized the truth. "In your world, I'm as bad as…" She looked out the way her brother had left. "…Justin?"

"Well, you were…" Max lifted his head up. "Until Mr. Flick changed you. After that, you became… smarter and more…"

"Wait a minute…" Alex knew that name. "Jerold Flick? Jerold Flick, the wizard comptroller?"

"You know him?"

"Max!" Alex tugged him to the cooler door and pulled him through into the lair. It was almost the same as the lair in Max's reality, but there were a few extra pieces. There was a large armoire with wizard robes in it, a red-haired mannequin holding necklaces and amulets and a street sign in front of the portal. Alex pulled Max over to a large mirror in a large ornate wooden frame covered with a sheet that she tugged off to fall to the floor. Alex grinned effervescently at it as Max peered upon his reflection.

"Max…" Alex acted like a game show spokes model before it. "This is the Mirror of Yensid. Look at what it does…" She stroked her finger in a circle on the glass and their reflections faded it away into smoke. Through the smoke other images pushed forward to a racecar in a Grand Prix Race racing twenty-two extra cars. People were yelling and screaming, the announcers were yelling excitedly. In the blue and yellow race car with the numerous sponsors was another Alex Russo and she was burning up the track doing what she did best.

"That's you?" Max watched.

"Kind of…" Alex grinned and fingered the glass again to another image. She looked back to see herself on stage singing to hundreds of thousands of people in a massive concert. Max dropped his jaw hearing Alex singing the song, "If Cupid Had a Heart." She fingered the glass again and the mirror showed another Alex in a star-spangled bustier with a golden lasso and bullet-deflecting bracelets fighting HYDRA terrorists in a world filled with superheroes.

"Dad is storing the mirror for Professor Crumbs, but he doesn't know I figured out what it does." Alex responded. "Max, this mirror shows alternate worlds and one of them has to be yours." She fingered the glass and saw herself as a vampire hiding in a coffin in a haunted monastery. "One night a few months ago I was in here watching these images and a man came out saying his name was Jerold Flick. He said there was a young female wizard who was going to lose her powers if she didn't start behaving herself, and he needed a portion of my soul and one other to help her keep her powers. Max, I think that girl was your Alex." She paused. "Your sister started behaving, what, a few months ago."

"So part of you is in my Alex?" Max looked to the mirror and saw another Alex as a secret agent with a gun and chasing an Italian terrorist named Demetria Lovato. "Where'd he get the other soul?"

"Phfft…" Alex shrugged her shoulders. "Some Alex somewhere elsewhere as an actress named Selena Gomez…"

"Who the heck is Selena Gomez?"

"Who cares?!" Alex fingered the glass again. "Max, if Flick can pass through this mirror to other Alexes in other worlds, so can you! One of these has to be your world! Oooo, that guy's cute…" She fingered the glass and saw a vision of the upstairs loft. In that world, Justin had a wand on Kevin Mitchell as his father read from a spell book. That Alex was crying her eyes out as they tried restoring the young man's memories…

"Max is so punished when gets back…" Jerry spoke from that reality.

"That's it!" Max started jumping around excitedly. "That's it!! Dad!!!" The image starting fading away…

"Before you lose it!!!" Alex raised a large crystal to the mirror to open it, causing the glass to slosh and move like liquid silver. "Hurry up!" She hugged her would-be brother as he pressed into the mirror and into that reality fading away. In front of her, Alex grinned good about herself, hoping Max made the vanishing reality and not the next one, but as her reflection came back, she saw her father standing behind her very upset and scowling with his arms folded angrily. She turned round to face him.

"Hi, daddy…" She beamed to him like a little girl. Trying to be angry, Jerry just broke down smiling at her adorable face and pulled her close to hug her.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Stumbling to his feet, Max lifted himself sore and bruised from the wood deck that was the Russo family balcony. He gasped a moment took a deep breath and looked around the patio area. His mother's plants and flowers were back, there were pedestrians along Waverly Place and the loft looked normal. He entered slowly and noticed Justin at the kitchen counter building a sandwich. Was he home? Was the timeline fixed? Was everything okay?

"Justin…" Max approached him. "What's the date?"

"I'm not a calendar…" Justin wiped mayonnaise on his bread and started stacking meat and sandwich vegetables. "Why don't you check the one on the wall?"

"I'm home!!!!" Max screamed happily, raced over and hugged his brother. "You won't believe what I have been through!"

"You're right…" Justin stacked Swiss cheese over roast beef with ham and tomatoes. "I probably won't believe it."

"Justin?" A girl's voice came from upstairs.

"Down here." Justin reached to get a soda and Max took his sandwich. He turned round holding his soda as Max took a bite and another one, even taking his soda. His brother disgustedly upset at him, Max started toward the sofa thinking Alex was coming down, but it wasn't…

"Justin…" Cute and effervescent, Gabrielle Russo came dancing over to her cousin. "Troy's going to be here any minute for our date. How's this dress look?"

"It looks fine with me."

"Who's this?" Max looked confused and tired.

"What do you mean, who's this?" Justin looked at his brother.

"I mean, who's this?" Max was about to lose it.

"Max…" Gabrielle giggled at him. "I'm your cousin, Gabrielle. I've been living with you guys ever since we were babies!"

"Then where's Alex?"

"Hopefully, still in Azkaban prison…." Justin started stacking a new sandwich with the other half of French bread.

"What's she doing there?!" Max put down his sandwich and was rubbing his head upset.

"Well, that's where wizards go who turn evil and try to take over the world." Justin applied mayo to his new sandwich.

"And try to kidnap actresses named Selena Gomez from their alternate realities." Gabrielle added.

"Who's Selena Gomez?" Max was to the point of crying.

"Didn't we tell you?" Justin continued casually restacking a new sandwich. "That's the actress that plays Alex in that other world. Yeah…" Justin ate a fresh sliced mushroom in his sandwich stacking. "And I was played by some guy called David Hennessy…. Or something like that…"

"And I was played by someone named Vanessa Hudson in a movie that didn't even occur on Waverly Place." Gabrielle remembered all of it. "They thought I was some sort of math geek in a school out in New Mexico!" She watched Max raising his wand. "What are you doing?"

"Tell mom and dad I'll be out for a while…" Max dropped the uneaten part of his sandwich, stole a sip of soda and realized this wasn't his time after all. Denied the use of an enchanted mirror, he resorted to the old reality-hopping spell. "Chronos Correctus!"

Meanwhile, in another parallel reality, Max found himself in the foyer of a haunted house resonating with the bouncy percussion theme of an old Sixties TV-show. The structure was dark, the furniture covered in cobwebs and long rays of sunlight poked past the black curtains. Max spun round twice looking around and heard the grinding noise of wood and gears as a section of the staircase lifted up to reveal a hidden passageway. From out of that dark passageway came a large version of his father with green skin, a large flat head and a huge powerful barrel chest. He looked as if he'd been pieced together by Dr. Frankenstein as his stitched hand reached over, bent down the balustrade and closed the stairwell.

"Well, Max…" Jerry Munster looked down on his boy and noticed he was without his werewolf-like traits. "Your old dad is returning to work for what we call, the graveyard shift…" He started laughing his loud boisterous laugh.

"I'm so glad Mr. Gateman gave you your job back." Theresa Munster came from the kitchen dressed in a white diaphanous gown with her father and carrying a giant lunch box. She looked zombie-like with that white skin, and her father looked like a cross between Count Dracula and a fat Jack the Ripper.

"Jerry," Grandpa looked to his son-in-law. "Look, my casket is getting a little scuffed. You think you can look around for a really nice one. Money is no object."

"Sure, Grandpa…"

"Mom, Dad…" Alex Munster came rushing into the house with blonde Marilyn Monroe-like hair and wearing a pink sweater with a blue skirt. She was happy, excited and overjoyed. "I met a cute young boy. His name is Justin Russo and he wants to take me out for a date tonight!"

"Well, you must bring him by the house to meet us." Theresa wanted to meet who was dating her daughter.

"Just a minute…" Max had heard enough. He had liked this world until he heard Alex would be dating Justin. "I'm out of here. Chronos Correctus!" He vanished.

In another reality resonating with the "Dark Shadows" theme….

Max was now in the front hall of a great mansion with a stained glass window at the top of a grand staircase. The hall extended down to a grand dining room and ballroom. The place was filled with expensive antiques and period furniture along with walls filled with portraits. One of them looked familiar. Max recognized Alex in the largest one. She was older, mature and incredibly beautiful with a long dark flowing dress from another time. The nameplate at the bottom of the portrait read "Alexandra Collins 1776-1798."

"Wow…" Max then heard the knocking sound at the doorway near him inside a dark alcove. Curious and tired, h approached the door, unlocked it and opened it wide. There was a woman standing in the enclosed entryway.

"Is Elizabeth Collins-Russo at home?" The shapely shadow stepped forward to reveal she looked like the adult Alex in the portrait. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Alexandra Collins… a cousin from England." She had that same distant faraway gaze that Alex had as a vampire.

"Excuse me…" Max didn't trust anyone right now who looked exactly like long-dead relatives. He closed the door and raised his wand. "Chronos Correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Gilligan's Island" theme….

Max found himself in a sandy beach commune formed by four thatched huts made of bamboo and palm leaves. The communal table was made from bamboo and Justin was wearing all white as he tinkered with the transmitter and several parts. Alex was dressed in a long silver lamiae dress, and Harper was in shorts and a tank top with farm girl pigtails. His dad was large and fat with a blue shirt and Captain's hat, his mother sitting under a parasol fanning herself. His own counterpart wore a red shirt and white pants with a little sailor hat as he delivered firewood.

"Dad, I think I can fix the transmitter." Justin was quite the brain.

"Why that's great, son!" He suddenly noticed other Max. "Who the heck are you?"

"Don't worry…" Max raised his wand. "I'll see myself off the island. Chronos Correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Addams Family" theme….

Max found himself in another strange foyer and stumbled back over a live lion rug that roared at him. His eyes drifted from the stuffed bear, the disturbing artwork and the mounted swordfish with the leg in its mouth. Over in front of the fireplace, his mother sat in a large wicker chair with midnight black hair and a long dark slinky dress while stroking a gold dragon statue blowing smoke. Wearing a pin-striped suit, his father smoked and gestured with his stogie over Justin who was quite a bit fat and wore a striped shirt. Alex was dressed like Lizzie Borden and held a headless doll.

"Look, kids..." Jerry Addams looked over to Max. "We finally found someone for you to play with."

Resembling the Frankenstein-monster, Lurch the manservant played a specific tune on the harpsichord finished by the family snapping their fingers to it.

"I don't think I want to play with anything in this house." Max raised his wand. "Chronos Correctus!!"

In another reality resonating with the "CSI" theme…

"Female DB…." Dr. Harper Finkle of the New York City Coroner's office was on the wharfs off Waverly Place looking at the body of a woman pulled out of the water. "I'd say between twenty to twenty-five years old, breast implants, fixed lividity… I'd say she's been in the water seven days to two weeks."

"Can you tell how she died?" A voice asked.

"Not until I get her back to my lab…" Harper pulled her long attractive locks back, gestured to her assistant to close the body back and looked up solemnly as she rose up to her feet. Lieutenant Justin Russo, the head of New York's foremost forensic lab, stood posed in his black suit and blue shirt with the flapping dark tie with the look of a tired grim reaper, the breeze picking through his short dark hair as he lifted his sunglasses up, pulled them back over his ears and postured stiffly as he looked over the water.

"I hate cases that begin with people using the wrong type of bait." He mumbled

"Yeah!!!!" Max screamed out with the intensity of a Pete Townsend rift. Justin and Harper looked over to him and glanced over him oddly at their crime scene. All Max could do was lift his wand to himself embarrassedly.

"Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Scrubs" theme…

Max was now inside a hospital somewhere in Southern California, and both Alex and Justin were wearing scrubs as medical interns. Justin's best friend was a bald African-American, and Alex was talking to a cute Hispanic nurse. One of the resident doctors whistled for attention and Justin and Alex snapped to attention before them.

"Okay, Barbie, Skipper…" Dr. Percy Cox called them by other names on purpose. "Here's the game plan… try not to kill anyone on my day off."

"What if something comes up and we need help?" Justin asked.

"I've got an idea." Perry Cox looked at the sibling doctors. "Why don't you two rub your heads together and try to come up with a thought that will actually make me want to give a darn." He turned and walked away.

"What a grouch!" Max walked up between his brother and sister. "You guys ought to put a curse on him or something."

"Yeah, we should…" Alex pulled her stethoscope down over her head. "Shame we're not wizards or something like that…"

"Wait, a second…" Justin noticed Max. "Who are you?"

"Just someone looking for directions…" Max shook his head tiredly. "Chronos correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Mythbusters" theme…

Max appeared in the office of a large warehouse filled with props, devices, tools and every object in the world from hovercrafts, mannequins, crash test dummies, costumes, blown up pig parts and unidentified inventions. Alex had red hair and wore a tight-fitting military green t-shirt with blue jeans as she rushed through to the drafting table at the wall.

"Guys, I've got another car!" She jingled the keys. "Let's blow it up!!" She was a little too excited.

"Well," Kevin had a big mustache and wore a beret. "What sort of myth do you want?"

"I got one." Justin wore glasses and a black t-shirt that read, "_I reject your reality and substitute my own_."

"There is a myth out there…" He continued. "…That a gas tank will explode if you shoot at it."

"Perfect!"

"Explosion?" Max sounded interested then changed his mind. "No… I got to get home. Chronos correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Ally McBeal" theme….

Called Ally by her friends, Alex Russo was a thirty-two year old lady lawyer who liked business suits with short skirts. The love of her life was Kevin Mitchell, but in the years they were apart, he had married the blonde and somehow hotter Samantha Danvers. Alex tried to hate her, but she and Samantha had turned out to be friends.

"_Oo-gah-chaka, oo-gah-chaka, oo-gah-chaka_…" That old tune from the Sixties came back to Alex's head as a figment of her mind to haunt her from the recesses of her subconscious. "_I can't fight this feeling deep inside of me_…" Along with the invisible dancing baby only she could see, it was the pulse of her clicking maternal time clock wanting to have a baby, and every time she saw it, she attacked it to try and stop it from harassing her conscious mind.

"Leave me alone!" She jumped across her desk to choke her hallucination and landed at Max's feet. "Who are you?"

"I think you're just a bit more crazier than my sister." Max commenced with moving on. "Chronos correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Benny Hill Show" theme….

Max landed in a park he didn't recognize amidst trees, freshly painted benches, mothers pushing strollers, two police officers walking on rounds and a lot of British vehicles driving by in the street. Over at the bus stop, Justin, Harper, Kevin and Alex stood with Dean, Samantha and Juliet and others from his past with comedian Benny Hill with his broken right hand in a sling over his over coat. Harper felt pinched and slapped Dean. Alex felt pinched and slapped Dean too before moving away from him. Samantha was pinched as Dean was confusingly slapped again. Justin and Kevin looked to Benny laughing as he revealed himself to be the real pincher be revealing his real right arm hidden under his coat. When Benny turned, the end of the umbrella he was holding accidentally goosed Juliet just as a truck came by and snagged the dresses off all four of the ladies, driving off with their dresses stuck to a bent antenna and leaving the several ladies in their underwear, slips and stockings. Taking a minute to realize what had happened, they looked to the guys who did a double take and started chasing them down the street trying to ogle them. From a speaker in the park played the "Yakety-Sax" theme that usually closed the sketch comedy in Max's time-line.

"Rerun." Max sighed. "Chronos correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Bewitched" theme…

"Mother!!!" Alex was a beautiful immortal sorceress married to Dean Moriarty, a young struggling advertising executive who her mother hated. "You have got to stop turning my husband into things. He is my husband and I love him very much."

"Alex…" Dean wore a suit and smoothed his hair. "Your mother is the worst…"

"Watch it, buster…" Theresa wore a blue and green witch's gown and made a dirty look to her son-in-law, just before all of them turned their heads to the other wall of the cozy Westport, Connecticut home. Max appeared out of nowhere before them and raised his wand.

"Don't mind me…" He nodded his head tiredly with a roll of his eyes. "I've got magic problems too! Chronos Correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Twilight Zone" theme…

Outside the shop, Max stumbled out on to Waverly Place. The street was empty and the buildings were in ruins. The cars were abandoned and degrading to dust within weeds and possessions scattered in the streets. There was not a sign of anyone anywhere. In the dress shop window, one mannequin held up another. Max looked up to the gray inert sky and looked around the desolate city. There was not a sign of life anywhere.

"Where is everybody?" Max cried out.

"Submitted for your approval," Justin stepped of doorway wearing a suit and nervously posturing with a cigarette. "One Maximillan Kelbo Russo, a hundred and eighteen pounds of exuberant and uninhibited frivolity cast in the form of a teenage boy. Max is carelessly adrift in the wide expanse of numerous alternate worlds in concurrent realities beyond our known timeline. He is lost, trying to find his way home from… The Twilight Zone."

"Who are you talking to?" Max looked over his shoulder. "Chronos Correctus!"

In another reality resonating with the "Dukes of Hazzard" theme…

"_Right about then in Hazzard County_," The Balladeer did the narration. "_Cousin Alex was distracting Boss Hogg as the Russo boys were speeding back over the State Line_." Justin was driving their over-charged orange stock car called the General Lee back into Hazzard County.

"Looks like Rosco ain't giving up…" Justin did the driving.

"We'll lose him over the creek…" Kevin Russo looked back to their pursuer and noticed Max in the back seat. "Where'd you come from?"

"I'm just passing through." Max held his wand and found himself in another reality. "Chronus Correctus!!!" The car hit the embankment and jumped the thirty feet over the river as Sheriff Rosco Coltrane in his heavier patrol car jumped and sunk behind them.

"Yee- Ha!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Six Million Dollar Man" theme…

Justin Russo… astronaut, a man just barely, alive had been pulled out of his mangled space capsule over thee years ago. His life was restore with advanced cybernetic limbs more powerful than his original body and his eye could peer into the infra-red spectrum and see up to ten miles away. Re-assigned as a secret agent for the government, Justin was under-going physical therapy for routine checks of his bionics at the Culver Institute near Washington D.C. At the time, he just wished he hadn't asked O.S.I. Director Oscar Goldman to save his sister's life after her parachute accident.

"Ha!" Alex laughed at Justin. "My parts are more expensive and more up to date than yours." She ran off at a hundred and eighty-five miles an hour.

"Alex!!!!" Justin hated her teasing and fought to catch up with her.

"I don't think so…." Max watched them for just a few seconds. "Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" theme…

"Ahhh, Justin…" The evil Dr. Alex Russo appeared on screen. She had trapped her brother in a satellite in outer space and tortured him with really bad movies he was forced to watch. "Your movie for today is a rancid peace of celluloid guaranteed to make you scream for mercy. It's called "Princess Protection Program," and it stars two actresses better suited off on Disney Channel where no one will hear them sing."

"Come on, Alex…" Justin scoffed and looked at his bots named Crow, Gypsy and Tom Servo. "You're going to have to try harder than that."

"Okay…" Alex looked again. "How about that god awful "Alvin and the Chipmunks" movie with that "My Name Is Earl" guy? It had parents walking out after the first five minutes!!!"

"Oooo, Alex…" Harper was Alex's minion. "How about that horrible "Charlie Angels" movie? It stars three actresses also made up largely of celluloid!"

"Perfect!!!" Alex transmitted the movie and looked again. "Hey, where'd that kid come from?!"

Up on the Satellite of Love, Justin and the bots noticed Max with them.

"I'm not sitting through that bomb twice!!!" He raised his wand. "Chronos Correctus!"

"Take us with you!!!" Justin and the Bots screamed for escape.

In another reality resonating with the "Land of the Lost" theme…

Stranded in an alternate earth themselves, scoutmaster Jerry Russo and his two kids, Justin and Alex camped out in a large cave fifteen feet off the ground to avoid the raptors and other creatures of this world. They survived on water from a spring and meals from caught chickens and giant vegetables, but they almost never saw regular people, so when Max suddenly appeared, they were more than taken aback..

"Dad!" Alex had long braided pigtails and wore a red-checked short and blue jeans.

"Who are you?" Jerry stood up, but at that second, they had another visitor. The t-rex had returned and was looking for them at the mouth of the cave.

"Dad, Grumpy's back!!!" Justin jumped to get their log spear ready. With his dad's help, they lifted it up and raced forward gaining momentum, letting the log fly forward and gag the annoying dinosaur in the gullet. After he coughed it up and headed off, the stranded Russo family would bring it back in.

"Well, I got to see a dinosaur!" Max sighed with a wave of his wand. "Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Big Bang Theory" theme…

"Kevin…" Justin was a very fussy thirty-four-year old quantum physicist at Cal-Tech. "You can't move out to live with my sister. Our living arrangement was based on the principal of a dual living co-habitation. If you move out without giving me prior notice, it could disrupt my flow charts and daily schedule rhythm."

"That's not my problem." Kevin was another Cal-Tech physicist eager to move away from this nut.

"Yes, it is…" Justin pointed out coldly logical. "Because you are the one wanting to move out."

"Justin…" Kevin looked at him. "When you were in school and the football team held your head in the toilet, did you ever black out?"

"Constantly."

"Explains so much…" Alex leaned over and whispered. "Look, Justin…" She turned to her brother. "If you don't want to live alone, just ask Max over there to move back in."

"Max is here??" He looked around and noticed his brother having appeared out of nowhere in the kitchen.

"Don't look at me!!!" Max vehemently resisted. "Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Simpsons" theme…

In a rather neon world filled with bright colors, Max found himself in a bright orange room with little furniture. There was a sofa before a TV and a few photos in frames, but the entire house had a rather fake amusement park feel. It wasn't deserted. Justin appeared wearing an orange shirt and blue shorts and carrying a saxophone.

"Justin…" Wearing very simple red dress, Alex growled upset. "Give me my saxophone back!"

"No way, Jose!!!" Justin grinned and ran away.

"D'oh!!!" Max did not want to stay here. "Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Married With Children" theme…

Dressed in his blue shirt and brown pants, Jerry Russo drove his smoking, oil-leaking dirty red Dodge home part of the way and coasted it the rest of the way. Standing on the brakes to stop it in his own driveway, he sighed, placed it in park out of habit and staggered tiredly as he stepped from the car and slammed the car door… just as the engine came back to life and started running again. He kicked the side of the car to get it to shut off then turned to head inside his home. Inside the split-level suburban home, Theresa Russo had a large bouffant of red hair as she watched "Oprah" on TV and snacked on bon-bons.

"Hi, Jerry," She wore tiger-striped Capri pants with a black off the shoulder blouse. "How was your day?"

"A fat woman oozed into the shoe store today…." Jerry began as he started for the kitchen. "Asking if I had anything to go with her black dress…" He opened the refrigerator and took out a beer. "I recommended a Doberman pinscher."

"Hey, dad…" Max Russo came down from the upstairs carrying a plastic lady blow-up doll. "I finally, finally, finally… got a real date tonight." He tossed his blow-up girlfriend aside. "I need some money." He extended his arm to his father alongside his mother begging for cash. Sitting before the TV with the remote, Jerry grimaced as if he was a caveman discovering first for the first time.

"That's weird…" He counted hands. "I seem to be a greedy hand short."

"Have a nice night…" Alex had blonde hair and wore black spandex as she returned from a previous night's partying. She pulled up part of her white halter top back over her shoulder. "Oh, I'm late!" She noticed her father in position and hastened over sticking out her hand for her allowance.

"Wait a second," Jerry recounted. "Now there's an EXTRA greedy hand!!!"

Everyone looked up to see an extra Max Russo with more hair, better clothes and fewer pimples. He looked around to the doppelgangers of his family and chuckled a bit under his breath.

"I saw a chance for free money…" He excused himself. "I know… I know… Chronus Correctus!" He gestured with his wand.

In another reality resonating with the "Suite Life" theme…

Cute brunette Alex Russo was the candy girl for the Tipton Hotel on Waverly Place where her divorced mother worked as a lounge singer. Somewhere out in the world, she had an older brother traveling with her father the rock star. Her boss was manager Marion Moseby, and he was not fond at all of her younger brothers. They sailed through the lobby on roller skates, explored the ductwork of the hotel and snuck into the upstairs rooms with free cable access. On the floor above the sunken lobby, the lobby elevators parted and the Russo twins came strolling out… Zack and Max Russo plus one. Moseby looked up casually to the triplets and spit out a mouthful of coffee from his mug.

"Where'd the third one come from?!!!" He screamed hysterically.

"That's weird…" The extra Max looked around a bit spooked at his younger versions. "Somehow, I think I've met you guys before…" He raised his wand. "Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Incredible Hulk" theme…

At the Waverly Institute in Manhattan, Dr. Alex Russo was searching for the way to tap into the buried strength potential of all human beings, but in her research, she had accidentally taken a massive overdose of gamma radiation.

"Harper, you've got to help me." Alex stood in the basement research chamber of the institute wearing glasses and a long white lab coat over her regular attire. "Ever since the thunderstorm the other night, I've been experiencing a startling metamorphosis every time I get angry or outraged."

"Oh, Alex…" Dr. Harper Finkle, the resident radiologist, stood before her studying Alex's research chart. "That's crazy! There's no way that could possibly happen." She noticed Alex's eyes light up a bright green behind her glasses. Her brunette colleague started trembling and shaking as she lifted her hand up to a rapidly appearing shade of green pouring from the blood vessels in her body.

"I believe it now!" Harper tossed the chart straight up and bolted for the stairs. At the foot of the stairs, she ran into a young kid she didn't recognize.

"You better get out of here while you can, kid!"

Max looked over to see his sister's hair bursting from her ponytail. She turned round as the back of her lab coat separated down the seam from her body increasing in size and stamina.

"I got my own way out!" Max was going to have nightmares for weeks to come. "Chronus Correctus!!!"

In another reality resonating with the "Cheers" theme…

"Good morning, everybody…" Fat public accountant Jerry Russo entered his favorite Waverly Street pub.

"Jerry!!!" The host of bar flies welcomed him back.

"How are things, Jerry…" Theresa Larkin was the bar's manager for the owner. She placed the receipts down to pour Jerry a drink.

"Like it's a dog eat dog world out there and I'm wearing milk bone underwear…." Jerry heaved up to his stool on the corner of the bar and took his initial first sip of beer. By his side, mail carrier Justin Russo sat in his uniform, stroked his mustache a bit and turned to his buddy.

"Hey, Jerry…" He spoke in a thick Boston accent. "I bet you didn't know that actual dog milk bones are mostly oat and oat by-products just treated for taste by the liquids of meat by-products for taste. In fact, commercially sold dog food and cat food…" Curly-haired Alex Russo knocked him upside the head by the tray she carried.

"Why did you do that?" Justin looked to her.

"Why not?" Alex cleared a table of empty beer mugs and carried them round into the bar area past Max watching and looking around with novel fascination.

"I wish I had a camera." He mugged a bit while bobbing his head. "My sister… actually doing work!!" He chuckled a bit as he grinned at these people. "Chronus Correctus!!!" He swayed his wand and vanished as Jerry choked from stunned surprise from his beer.

"Alex, what the heck is in this beer?!" Jerry thought his beer was making him see things. He slid it toward Justin and took Justin's beer to replace his, chugging it down with a loud happy gasp before sling the mug forward for a refill.

In another reality resonating with the "Batman" theme….

"I wonder who you are in that costume…" Alex was dressed as Catwoman on top of her brother as the Batman.

"I think you're better off not knowing…" Justin as Batman didn't recognize her either as he pushed her off. As Robin, the Max of this world was fighting a teenaged Joker and a female Riddler with blonde hair. Justin punched two henchmen, flipped another guy over his shoulder and rushed to help his partner fight these villains. Using the claws in her costume, Alex jumped to scratch the caped crusader, but Justin instinctively ducked and eluded her attack. In the mask and red and green costume, Max the boy wonder was trained in a bit of the martial arts himself, eluding the Penguin trying to hit him with an umbrella and the female Riddler trying to knock him off the rooftop. He whirled round and saw… himself.

"Holy Doppleganger!!!" He cried out at the other Max.

"This is like so cool!!!" Max recognized himself as Robin and his sister at Catwoman but wasn't sure of it was Justin as the Batman. "I'd really like to stay and watch, but I really got to get home! Chronos Correctus!" He zapped himself from this alternate reality.

In another reality resonating with the "Hanna Montana" theme…

"Alex…" Billy Ray Russo called for his daughter. "You better get going."

"Yeah…" Justin sat watching TV near his father while munching on his sandwich and chips with a liter of soda by his side. "Dad needs a lot of time to squeeze your ego into the limo."

"Justin…" Alex came down dressed as her blonde pop star alter ego, Michayla. "Try getting off that couch without going…" She made groaning noises as if she was morbidly obese. After mocking her brother, she turned to her father. "I can't believe I have to share a stage with Miley Cyrus. She is the biggest diva!"

"I know, bud, just don't worry about her…" Robby reached over and opened the door to head out, revealing Max very confusingly looking around the Malibu beach house. The young misplaced wizard looked into Michayla's brown eyes and saw his sister under the blonde hair.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" He screeched in disbelief and strangled his wand. "Take me home, will you! Chronus Correctus!!!"

Meanwhile, lost in the South Pacific in a reality resonating with the "Lost" theme…

"How are you guys doing with the fish?" Dr. Jack Shepard looked at two of the other survivors of the crash of Oceanic 18.

"Fair." Charlie Pace spoke with an Aussie accent and looked up as he stuffed a crab into a cloth bag. "Have you heard from Locke?" He looked to Hurley and back again.

"No…" Jack sipped his water. "I imagine he's still hunting boar." There was a rumbling in the bushes. Something or someone was screaming his lungs out as Max jumped out pulling weeds and twigs out of hair and waving his wand at the mosquitoes biting him.

"There's a giant black smoke monster chasing me!!!" He screamed and tore down the beach screaming past Kate and Sawyer looking at him. Hurley looked at Charlie, Charlie looked at him and back to Jack and Jack looked back and forth a bit confused.

"Who's the midget?" Sawyer asked with his arms out-stretched for an explanation.


	8. Chapter 8

8

There was turmoil half a world away from the island as a young girl named Akex Russo felt her heart breaking. In a familiar loft over a family sandwich shop on Waverly Place, her brother, Justin Russo, was getting tired. He was nineteen years old, his arm was getting tired, it was going on nine o'clock and he was going to mss "Destination Truth" on TV if this spell didn't work. Clearing his throat, he looked from his sister, to his mother and Harper and back to his father as he tried another spell on Kevin.

"_Never forget, Remember all_!" He waved another spell at Kevin. The young writer wavered a bit and remained standing as Alex checked him out.

"Kevin?" Alex approached him eagerly.

"You're pretty." The amnesiac responded barely cognizant, and Alex screamed again stamping her foot.

"It didn't work!!!" Alex cursed. "Justin, hit him again!"

"Alex," Justin looked at her incredibly sorry. "But this is the umpteenth memory spell I've tried. You just got to face it. He's never going to remember you. All of his memories were completely erased."

"Justin, please…" Alex had been crying her heart out. "You have to try. We still have twenty-two memory spells to go."

"Dad…" Justin looked to his father for support.

"Alex… honey…" Jerry tried to console her. "Whatever Max did to him… he wiped Kevin's memories clean. There is nothing there to bring back. I'm so sorry!"

"But he loved me!!! He really loved me!!" Alex started crying hysterically again. "Give me the book! I'll keep trying myself!!" She could barely think in her heartbroken state. "I'll keep going and even make up a few spells until Kevin remembers me!" Her voice wavered and trembled. Tears dropped down her inconsolable face. "He will love me again. I won't let him go!!!"

"Lexie, honey…" Theresa tried to support Alex, but the hysterical young lady wouldn't give up. She took her wand and the book and pulled Kevin over to the sofa. In her hard emotional state, she could barely say the spells. Her tears fell in the spell book as Alex resisted even Justin's help. Kevin just sat on the sofa without a thought in the world, his mouth hanging partially open, no human response as he stared at a spot on the floor.

"Jerry," Theresa grew concerned. "Kevin's mother has called twice. We can't send her son back to her a mindless vegetable!"

"I'm not sending him home!" Jerry had a back-up plan. "I'm going to leave him wandering around the emergency room at the hospital; someone will find him and take care of him."

Theresa slapped her husband for being insensitive. For what seemed the first time, Justin felt sorry for his sister. Every time she found a guy that truly loved her, she lost him. As much as he always said he hated her, he wanted her to be happy, and he decided to help Alex try the rest of the spells, but Harper stopped him, gave him a look and turned to Alex herself.

"_Penny For Your Thoughts_!!!" Alex waved her wand to Kevin, but she didn't see a reaction. He just sat and swayed a bit, and she shrieked under breath out of increasing desperation. She had to get him back… she had to!!!

"Alex, stop!" Having watched this spectacle unfold, Harper placed her hand over Alex's wand. "You are going crazy. He's gone!"

"Take your hand off my wand or else I'm turning you into a dung beetle!" Alex hissed and Harper jerked her hand back shocked and surprised.

"Alex…" Justin came over. "Get something to eat… I know some spells from Hogwarts that might work."

"Justin…" Alex tilted her tearful eyes up. "Please get him back." She wheezed and looked around distraughtly. "Oh god…" Her shaking hand pulled the long hair from her face. "This is my fault. All those years of doing bad things… I'm being punished." Her mouth moved silently from the silent screams in her throat, her head tilting up as she died inside…

"No, Alex…" Justin hugged her and then Harper hugged her too.

"Alex, don't say that…" Jerry came over, pulled Kevin up and responded determined and assuredly. "Get your coat, we're taking Kevin over to Professor Danvers. If any one can help Kevin, he can!" He turned to Theresa. "When Max gets home, ground his ass!"

"Got it!!!" The lovely Latina reacted snapping her fingers trying to be a good and responsible parent. Justin grabbed his coat from the coat rack, handed Alex Kevin's coat and she placed it around him and zipped it up with renewed hope. As she looked into his blank expression, she paused to reach up to his shoulders.

"Kevin…" Alex's head trembled heart-brokenly. "I've been in love with a lot of guys, but with you… I finally thought it was the real thing." She reached up and held his face in her hands, came in close to be with him and lifted her lips up to his, kissing him good-bye for what might be the last time. Harper shed a tear for Alex's heartbreak, and Theresa held her hand to her chest as Jerry and Justin looked away from the show of affection. As Alex kissed Kevin, the boy's hands swayed, reacted and came up to hold Alex by the waist, pulling her closer, his lips kissing her back. Reacting with surprise, Alex opened her eyes and looked back into Kevin's grinning hazel eyes looking back at her.

"I can't believe I'm in love with a Wizard." Kevin told her. Screaming excitedly, Alex started hugging him tightly and crying happily with tears of joy.

"What happened?" Justin looked to his father.

"It's the Fairy Tale Spell…" Jerry even wiped away a tear. "It's always the freaking last spell in the freaking book that does it… After all, true love conquers all."

"Alex…" Kevin was looking around at her family as she hugged and kissed him. "Your family's watching…"

"Don't care!" She squeezed tighter and tighter, loosening her grasp but not letting go when the oven door crashed open. There was a puff of smoke and from the floor Max started lifting himself up from the floor. He wasn't burnt or smoking, but he was drenched head to toe in a thick slimy mucus that poured off of him in buckets. He squeezed it out of his hair, flicked it off his arms and shook himself like a giant wet dog. He looked around once, noticed Alex with Kevin and dropped to his knees.

"I'm home!!!" He screamed out crying a bit.

"Max!" Theresa hastened over, looked into the oven and closed it. "What were you doing in the oven?" She grabbed the dishtowel to clean him off of the mucus dripping off him.

"I wasn't in the oven!" Max looked around grinning and excitedly. "I've been running from a fifty-foot tall version of Alex in another reality! I couldn't get my wand back until she swallowed me so I could zap myself out of her stomach!" He wandered casually to the refrigerator. "Is there any dinner left?"

"Max…" Jerry headed to the boy trying to be angry. "You've been in another alternate reality?"

"Dad," Max looked at him. "I've been time traveling through umpteen alternate realities for the last eleven hours! I saw hundreds of versions of us in alternate words and dimensions in every possible scenario!" He paused a bit tiredly. "Did you know we're a TV series on Disney Channel in one world? You didn't notice I was gone! You didn't try looking for me?!"

Jerry, Harper, Theresa and Justin looked at each other, turned around and looked at Alex.

"Well, I'm sorry!" She held on to Kevin. "But when my boyfriend suddenly forgets me, everything else takes second place!!!" She tugged him away to head downstairs. "Come on, Kevin, I got a really cool spell I can use to zap you to your house!"

"Alex, please…" Kevin looked from her to her family and back again. "No more magic for me…" She dragged him from the room to show him the lair done behind the shop. "I think I got a headache."

"Ohhhh…" Theresa looked at them. "Our Alex is happy again…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah… Max…" Jerry looked to the boy glistening in the thin layer of reflective liquid. "I ought to punish you, but… what you've been through is punishment enough." He looked at the boy eating a sandwich while still covered in that bodily material. "How can you eat with that Giant Alex mucus all over you?"

"What?" Max responded as if he didn't understand the question as both his mother and Harper cringed in disgust. Over on the sofa, Justin collapsed and tried to relax. He was exhausted after seventy-three consecutive memory spells. He tilted his head back, cocked his legs up on the table and groaned tiredly, but it was not to be. Harper came over grinning and stroking his perfect head of hair.

"Justin, why don't we go see a movie together?" Harper looked at him deeply infatuated.

"Because I'm tired from all those memory spells…" Justin reacted rationally instead of frustrated at her undying love to him. "And because I'm hardly dressed for it."

"Oh really…" Harper pulled her wand out from her boot and pointed it at herself and Justin. She was suddenly in a powder blue sweater and white shirt and blue jeans with ribbons in her hair and Justin was in dress pants, a shirt and tie with a dark jacket. Max had seen the whole scene. His parents hadn't reacted at all. He looked to them, to Harper and Justin and back again. Harper was grinning happily, kissing her wand and beaming head to toe as Justin realized what had happened.

"I guess we're going to the movies." Justin announced as Harper cheered.

"Be back by eleven." Jerry called to them. Max just stood at the counter in shock.

"Harper's a wizard now?" He asked.

"Of course…" Theresa said it as if it was nothing new. Harper collected her wrap and headed out the door with Justin's arm around her waist.

"Since when…"

"Since she discovered her ancestor was a witch." Jerry looked Max over and helped Theresa with the dishes. Max just stood in shock, looked at Justin and Harper heading out and back to his parents.

"Eh… close enough!!!" He sat down to eat his plate of chicken, stuffing and vegetables at the table before the windows. Out on the patio, Alex appeared again in different clothes and without Kevin.

"Max, glad you made it…" Other-Alex looked around Max's world barely noticed by his parents. "Can I borrow a part of your Justin to fix my Justin?" She grinned with a vivaciously vibrant grin.

END


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